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:
“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?
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)
first sketches of “i” as an imaginary function, trying to grasp sense of self, idealised image of the self, narcissism
subjecthood is partly a falsehood, perceptual comprehension
social media could be substituted for mirror, creating idealised image that we don’t look like to show to others
similarly, with watching a film, only engage with our eyes
“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:
Character - protagonist, locus of primary identification
Camera - permits appearance of first, more central role
-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.
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.
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