RITUAL OF RETURN

Once the class completed the seminar portion of the course, we embarked
on ideation for our joint class art project, in which students were
tasked with proposing project concepts to their peers. Several ideas
emerged, but we finally settled on a very specific idea that centered on
the butterfly as a metaphor for transformation and embedding the viewer
into the video installation. With a working title of Ritual of Return, the
installation uses immersive video of leaves, insects, and earth overlaid
with live video of the viewers themselves in order to provide viewers the
opportunity to experience themselves as embedded within the ecologies
and environments they inhabit. A walking performer wearing a GoPro
camera moves through the gallery space, gathering live footage of viewers
which is superimposed onto the nature videos. At the same time, a
penetrative soundscape of stretched sonic material permeates the space
and body, while the interior voids of bold chrysalis-like sculptures hanging
from the gallery ceiling hold space for potential metamorphosis. These
sculptures are large and reach the viewer at eye level. They emit light and
contain fabric material.
In order to produce a show of this scale, we split ourselves into three
groups. One group tackled videography, editing, and sound production.
Another group took on sculpture creation, and the third was tasked with
designing our process book. The videography team was led by Leslie Foster,
our Teaching Assistant who is a visual artist and filmmaker.
At first, the idea was to create a central sculpture that resembled a specimen,
which would hold milkweed, the plants butterflies need to survive.
After beginning work on creating butterflies with paper,