[-empyre-] (no subject)

[Elizabeth Wijaya]

I agree with Tim's observation that Chiang's work remains tied to
"projection" with elements of "distancing" and I think this is true even
for the so-called immersive VR experience. From my experience of VR so far,
it is immersive insofar as the act of putting on the headset cuts off more
of your senses from the immediate physical surroundings  than in a cinema
hall, for example, but partly because there's frequently still a lot of
limitations including the loss of frame rates, it doesn't close the
'distancing' gap that VR is sometimes touted to do.

Another example of an even greater distancing through the use of drones is
from an artist that Tim is familiar with—Singapore artist Charles Lim's
"SEA STATE 9: Proclamation.

 "Proclamation" comes from the Singapore President's legal/magical ability
to sign and turn "sea" into legal land. The sea is filled in with sand from
Vietnam/Cambodia/Indonesia in the process officially called  "land
reclamation."  Though this is not an example of indigenous art, it is
interesting how "reclamation" has different resonances for native and
indigenous people versus when the state is "reclaiming" the land from the
sea. In terms of time, I think the work below, entirely shot with drones,
shows the invisibilized processes that make up  the quotidian time of
Singapore.  These processes are omnipresent and not obviously hidden from
sight but are also invisible in time  because few have the opportunity to
see the slowness of the parts that make up the machinations. But of course,
from this high point of view, the racialized aspect of the labor involved
is also not visible.

https://vimeo.com/204825032

-- 

Elizabeth Wijaya
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Comparative Literature
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York
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