what is there to do about the flowers?

what is there to do about it? about the flowers? cause the shadows they’re casting on my wall in this dull grey of a sunset through my window almost made me forget for a second and what is there to do about the fact that i still think they’re pretty? and how it doesn’t make me feel less lonely

it’s funny cause i looked over at the pictures and papers pasted all over my walls and my first thought was “god that’s gonna take so much effort to take down” 'cause i’ll have to not too long from now only two years practically tomorrow my homes are always temporary but it doesn’t take very long for me to make them feel like home although that doesn’t stop me from leaving i hate that i'm always observing myself but it’s the only way i’ve learned to exist it’s the only reason i’m not as scared as i used to be but i wanna throw away all the clothes i wear you can take them if you want them i don’t want to need them anymore

i used to have a music box bigger than this, same song it’s collecting dust on my shelf now i don’t think it ever meant anything special to me i don’t recall any fond memories that it makes an appearance in i don’t remember where the stickers on it came from but they’re leaving marks and i think i only pretend it’s sentimental i don't remember much in general to be fair maybe cause it’s one piece of my childhood that i know the place of out of all the ones that got lost in the packing and moving over and over and i want the anchor of nostalgia but i don’t feel anything towards it at all or anything else i’ve forgotten in boxes

and yet there is never a day that i forget the feeling of missing someone but now we’re both miserable are you happy now?

It’s not about the dull grey blue lighting washing the flowers that juxtaposed my finding them pretty. It was the admittance that I still found the beauty in things even when I wanted to die and I’m not sure if that's a sign that maybe I don’t really want to die or if it’s a sign that perhaps it really is hopeless. if the beauty in it all isn’t enough anymore. Either way, there's a resignation to all of it. Resignation. As the first to watch this film, Victoria and her reliability for analysis found us looking for the word to convey something between acceptance and defeatism. The resignation that everything in life is fleeting. Letting go not because I'm okay with it but because I have to be. The word didn't occur to me until 3:57am (when she had already stopped replying hours ago). Seeing my half opened drawer overflowing with unfolded clothes out of the corner of my eye, I felt a sense of dread similar to that of glancing over at my wall of assorted papers. Do I no longer want to need the clothes in order to be seen as pretty or do I no longer want to be seen at all? I don't know which it was at the time but I do know I'm still putting off going through and sorting them. In the end, I suppose it's that I feel the absence of people and nothing else. The hole in my unrequited dependency more than the loss of houses and objects (until I'm looking for the old books and my parent's mixtapes in the garage) And I guess the last line is sarcastic in that it contradicts the previous statement. But it’s also asking, Are you better off without me?

Are you happier than I am?

Or are we still in this together even without the other in our life anymore? I was meant to go out this evening. For my friend's birthday. I was all dressed up, makeup done, sitting in my best dress. And then, I was crying. I can't even remember why. Something just set it all off and I knew immediately I was not going out dancing that night. It happens. After sending a message to cancel (over a headache and nausea, which, to be fair, wasn't a lie on top of everything else), I sulked up to my bedroom on the top floor. The sunset that day wasn't as warm as previous evenings so I hadn't even noticed the daylight fading. Until I was lying at the foot of the bed, parallel to my pillow, thinking a thought that didn't finish the way it started. "What is there to do about-- ?" And that's when I noticed the sun was setting. That's when I noticed the dead flowers above my mirror that I overlook every morning when I'm assessing my outfit of the day. And my brain autofilled the rest with its own newfound fixation. They weren't even doing anything special to catch my eye. They were only intercepting the last of the day's light to outline itself as it always does. But they distracted me so much, interrupted my pity party-- the nerve of them. And then my head just kept repeating the same phrase. So I grabbed my camera, I opened my notes app, I started writing. I didn't think too deeply about the meaning or the symbolism as I made it. I simply wanted to record my thoughts as they came. I'm only reflecting on it now (Sorry for tainting it with too much tangible meaning). And so, aside from the clips of me, I filmed, edited, and recorded the entirety of the piece in that evening. It felt like writing a diary entry-- creating it that quick-- and I think it helped me process those feelings the same way journaling would-- but even more so because I had something to show for it. For once, I was able to capture how I saw the world from the space of my room-- where I spend most of my time-- and put it into visuals and sound the way that it felt to me. For once, I had something to show for the world inside my head that wouldn't usually see many visitors. I'm a very visual person, I think-- my emotions are often linked to some sort of imagery in my head. I think it's what allows me to write songs that are sort of narrative. The main issue I've faced in my creative and personal life so far is that I never feel fully satisfied in how I convey my thoughts and feelings, because I can't present them through my own eyes. It will always go through the filter of interpretation. And even if later on, I gain the skills and means to recreate the vision in my head and supplement it through media, by that point it's also been worn down by the nature of memory and the way I don't tend to be able to grasp much from moment to moment. But I think with this, I may be able to get a hang of it. And Willem, I'm sorry I missed your birthday.

too boring for my diary too much for my reality

I'm the kind of person you could fall in love with the idea of: the cluelessly whimsical and hopelessly cliché. The perfect companion to a whirlwind romance that was clearly doomed from the very start. After all, I was never the kind to go beyond infatuation. But, at least that infatuation reaches down to the deepest roots and anchors itself in place. At least it grows to its full extent and even more so in the form of unhealthy obsession—almost like a virus, almost worse than a disease. Isn't that why they call it lovesick? I've never been very good at keeping my walls stable enough to shut people out completely. I build them up with sticks in place of bricks so that a single stone—or in this case, a charming smile or pretty eyes— could easily demolish it and wedge itself in my heart and mind. It's ridiculous how much, and simultaneously, how little I try. Don't ever let yourself get stuck in the dilemma of deciding whether the chance of connecting with someone is worth the risk that they'll leave because even the slightest sense of hesitation will be enough of a chink in your armour to entirely break through it with ease. Maybe it's the lonely part of me longing for company— in contradiction to my defensive stance—that keeps leaving the door open just a crack, ready to swing open and welcome the next one. Maybe it's the cautious part of me that keeps the lights inside dimmed, shoving them back towards the exit; always hoping they'll push back harder, always hoping they'll fight to stay. Doesn't everybody? It's a cruel test to pit every newcomer against the resentment left behind by a past they never knew in order to prove their resilience and unconditional care for me. It's not fair that I pin every hope and every fear to those who will never fully understand every bit of kneading previously done to shape me into who I am today. It's not fair that I can't help constantly comparing them to someone they've never even met. It's an impossibly high standard that just perpetuates the cycle of loving and leaving in a broken record repeating over and over and over. Letting the past rule your present is exactly how you end up chasing people away. It's self-destruction. As a result, I keep finding myself tightrope walking the line between heartbreaker and heartbroken. Sooner or later I seem to end up in the latter position— all too familiar with the bitter aftertaste on my tongue, which I bite to stop myself vomiting up too much honesty. But in my music? I'm allowed to do the exact opposite. Every song is a piece of myself locked away in a melody. Every lyric is a confession so dangerously authentic. It's almost like a diary. It's almost recklessness within reason. So here I am, sharing a peek inside my mind. Pouring my heart out onto an operation table to be dissected by whoever cares to listen. Take me how you'd like— even if I look like an idiot...

Escapism & LuYang NetiNeti's 'Digital Reincarnation': Project Documentation Excerpt

How does technology enable escapism?

Ironically, doing this project on escapism has made escapism increasingly impossible. I have become so aware of my own escapism, it is painfully ironic. (One might say, I cannot escape the escapism).

In other news, Joud, Lynn, and I visited the Zablubdowicz Collection on Saturday 05/11/2022. The LuYang NetiNeti exhibition offered more delightfully strange and surreal visuals than I could have hoped for when I first caught a glimpse of it on my friend’s Instagram story months ago and asked her for the name of the gallery. Multimedia artist LuYang creates complex worlds and universes through CGI animation and motion tracking to explore Buddhism, as well as the themes of reality, and identity. These are accompanied by “intense metal soundtracks” that really enhance the experience of the already visually intense pieces. Having most of these videos play with headphones made it really immersive (very loud music blasting in your ears will do that).

“The exhibition centres on LuYang’s own ‘digital reincarnation’, an avatar called DOKU. Named after the phrase ‘dokusho dokushi’, which translates as ‘we are born alone, and we die alone’, DOKU exists in a realm beyond the limitations of material bodily reality.”

The film playing in the Main Hall of the exhibition, DOKU The Self (2022), was my favourite part as it seemed most relevant to our theme, as well as my own reflections about life that dominate my psyche. In the narrative film, LuYang presents their avatar in environments corresponding to the six paths of reincarnation in Buddhism: Hell, Heaven, Hungry Ghost, Animal, Asura, and Human. Between these, they ponder the “mysteries of consciousness”, “the cycles of death and rebirth over countless ages, and how ‘the concept of the self’ relates to the physical body.” We had hoped to be able to find somewhere to rewatch this online later so that we could better analyse it, but I haven’t been able to find it.

We discussed this in our tutorial Tuesday 22/11/2022 with Tadej. LuYang presents themes of duality, e.g. life and death, beauty and ugliness, good and bad, etc. – binary concepts which they then break down and critique, on top of discussing the role of the experience of pain in forming identity, and how much identity is solely rooted in biology and brain functions: “If the body and mind can simulate the pain and happiness I experienced… then I do not need my body in flesh, I can become a brain in a vat.” If we can simulate senses and feelings through digital technology, what is reality? If immersive enough, can the reality created through escapism become a person’s main reality?

Notes from Tutorial

I was also curious about the quote on the front and back of DOKU’s hoodie with the front reading, “To live fully is to be always in no man’s land” and the back, “To be willing to die over and over again.” After a quick search I found that the full quote, "To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man's-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again. From the awakened point of view, that's life. . . .” came from an excerpt in When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron, on being present. The book also follows Buddhist teachings.

Throughout the mezzanine and the screening room, LuYang’s works further explore the connections between neuroscience, medicine and religion. By linking the subjects, LuYang seeks to gain a greater understanding of how our physical bodies can be manipulated to alter our consciousness and consider the extent to which our corporeal forms are still present in our interpretations of the afterlife and transcendence. Electromagnetic Brain Control Messenger (2018) is a 10-minute fever dream of a J-Pop/anime boss battle/dance-off that depicts Japanese idol, Chanmomo as a schoolgirl superhero armed with a wand and crown based on real-world Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation technology. LuYang Delusional Crime and Punishment (2016) sends DOKU into multiple realms of hell with exercise machines, amusement park rides, morgues, labs etc. It reflects on “the absurdity of traditional visions of hell”and their dependence on physical torture. The narration explains things like operant conditioning, pain, and torture methods. The rest of the video installations continue to use deities, superheroes, etc. to depict themes of gender, spirituality, emotion and other concepts which are debated to exist between physical and non-physical.

From LuYang’s website, under piece commissioned for The 1975’s Playing On My Mind:

DOKU x The 1975

• “In the virtual world,” says Yang, “I was able to do things such as choosing my own gender-neutral body and creating an appearance that reflects my own sense of beauty, which are not possible in real life. I consider Doku as my digital reincarnation. He is me but someone else at the same time. Just like the Buddhist concept of alayavijnana [storehouse consciousness], he represents a stream of consciousness which lingers in different worlds and different selves.” Unleashed from the constraints of having a physical body, Doku is free to dive into the mysteries of the universe and try to establish a greater sense of his own identity. “On a planet where time and space no longer limit our minds,” says Yang, “to live is to create and explore. Emptiness and loneliness become the ultimate romance.” He shows us how our shared virtual world, the world of digital creation and imagination, the world in which you’re watching his film, is not so different from the planet without time and space of his imagination: it’s a creative place where we can play with our identities and explore ourselves, our many parallel selves, and prepare those selves for new dimensions and universes. A whole new cosmos of infinite possibility stretches before us.

What can be achieved through a digital landscape?

In the final section of the exhibition, LuYang’s works were all made into playable arcade games. Being able to experience them in this way really enhanced my understanding of the intended message and themes behind them, as the world-building in LuYang’s works is especially prevalent in these games. Video games usually have a clear objective which makes the consumption of these works more intentional. As the design of the actual gameplays were relatively simple, the goal of each one was straightforward. The added element of interactivity the arcade provided was just another layer to the already highly developed video works. This is something that I’d love to incorporate into our own practical work.

The Great Adventure of Material World (2020) follows The Material World Knight (2018) on their journey through different realms of the universe. The knight seems to want to escape the world of consumerism and superficial validation as the captions bring up “philosophical questions, queries, and paradoxes.” The retro-futurist arcade presents worlds that could be interpreted as both dystopian potential futures and exaggerated portrayals of our existing present reality. In reference, then, to our tutorial’s discussions: How much is escapism just a representation of reality?

LuYang NetiNeti - The Adventure of Material World

Although rooted in real-world concepts and imagery, it is seen by us, the audience, through the filter of their perspective. In this sense, escapism for the audience is experiencing someone else’s point of view and version of the world. This is generally applicable to video games, books, cinema, and other forms of escapism through media.

This reminded me of notes I took following last year’s Developing Contemporary Media Practice lecture on Psychoanalysis and Hitchcock’s Rear Window:

The Screen Mirror: Specularization and Double Identification

• ‘mirror’ stage, child at age of 2, identifying with image of ourselves as reality (Lacan)

1. first sketches of “i” as an imaginary function, trying to grasp sense of self, idealised image of the self, narcissism

2. subjecthood is partly a falsehood, perceptual comprehension

3. social media could be substituted for mirror, creating idealised image that we don’t look like to show to others

4. similarly, with watching a film, only engage with our eyes

5. “I” formed by continually looking for pictures of self in world -> e.g. film

Plato’s allegory of the cave, idealist philosopher, suspicious of perception as access to truth, everything is merely a reflection/transformation of the true form existing in another realmImage necessitates loss of thing itself, should not be taken as whole realityRear window protagonist, rendered immobile, photographer, engages with world visually

• Two Levels of Identification:

1. Character - protagonist, locus of primary identification

2. Camera - permits appearance of first, more central role

3. -film shows difference between levels, reinforces Baudry’s point

If our primary identification is with Jeff and our secondary identification is with the camera, what functions as Jeff’s primary and secondary identification?

• Jeff understood as allegory for film spectator

• identifies with his neighbours as they sometime reflects his own values and reinforce his own worldview

• projects own sense of self, e.g. assuming composer living alone had unhappy marriage

• “the reality mimed by the cinema is thus first of all that of a self” (Baudry)

• cinema gives us solid but illusory sense of self

Jacques Lacan’s concept of ‘The Mirror Stage’ “is based on the belief that infants recognize themselves in a mirror or other symbolic contraption which induces apperception from the age of about six months.” The development of the ego is inherently dependent on external objects and so, we spend the rest of our lives looking for reflections of ourselves in our external world. I think that I most enjoy media, whether it be art, music, literature, film etc., that seems to give tangibility to my own beliefs about the world. When the lyrics, imagery, narration, sound, seem to perfectly capture my own thoughts and feelings, I find it easier to escape into. I think escapism may just be the process of people trying to understand themselves by knowing others. Even while researching for this project, I’ve been looking for the references that could better explain and reaffirm what I already know and perceive about the human experience. I think, then, that escapism may be about identity formation.

But I may just be projecting.

https://english.hawaii.edu/criticalink/lacan/

In summary, LuYang’s escapism comes with the ability of virtuality to render worlds from their own imagination, inspired by video games, anime and manga, and other online cultures that shaped their personality. The malleability of digital worlds enables them to create overly saturated maximalistic worlds that reflect the culture of modern society. Their works represent their experience of the world and how they define their own identity beyond their physicality. They use them to overcome and break the boundaries of the binary systems of the world through imaginative digital worlds that are then interpreted by the audience in their own experience escaping into them. Using digital platforms to both construct the worlds and enhance their immersive quality is only the first step in considering the implications of just how effectively our audience will embrace the form of escapism we present them with.