The Lucid Forest - Residency Project at Lucid Arts Foundation
Date: 2023
Medium: Video
Duration: 08:56
While working on this series I was reminded of Hito Steyerl’s essay ‘In Free Fall: A Thought Experiment on Vertical Perspective’, in which she relates revolutions in visual culture to structures of representation and power. From the invention of the artificial horizon in perspective drawing to the emergence of satellite imagery and drone warfare, Steyerl walks us through the development of contemporary non-human surveillance sight. Much like the vertical view of earth from above, the impossible perspective of thousands of points of view is contained in each 3D scan, altering the way we view the physical environment.
Lucid Arts Foundation was founded by surrealist painter Gordon Onslow Ford and lucid dream researcher Fariba Bogzaran as a space to explore the depths of human consciousness. This series of 3D point clouds presents momentary vignettes of the Bishop Pine Preserve, Onslow Ford's house and his studio. During my residency at Lucid Arts in 3023 I spent countless hours 3D scanning the Bishop Pine Preserve created by Onslow Ford and his wife Jacqueline Johnson. The work evokes a disembodied dream state that drifts through the pine forests and campus of Lucid Arts Foundation. Artifacts of digital compression reference the temporal and intangible nature of 3D data space.