Strangeness of Seeing – a journey of perception and wonder

 HOT’S Judy Parkinson delves into the stuff of our inner and outer world and how we perceive it by speaking to artist filmmakers Nichola Bruce and Rebecca E Marshall about their new immersive experience at Electro Studios.

Strangeness of Seeing Experimental will immerse you in a mesmerising journey through multiple layers of everything you behold with your eyes wide open and firmly shut. Electro Studios will be transformed into a space of mind-expanding projections, short films in virtual reality headsets and the chance to participate by sharing your own unique perceptual experiences.

Artist filmmakers Nichola Bruce and Rebecca E Marshall have built a lyrical compendium of 26 moving-image film-poems that explore their subjective experiences of perception. From visions seen with closed eyes, through blinking, crying and daydreaming, the artists have been exploring the processes of perceiving the world.

Bruce and Marshall are now developing the Strangeness of Seeing to make a sensory virtual reality experience that lifts philosophical ideas off the page into a bodily experience. The showcase weekend at Electro Studios on 11 and 12 January will be an opportunity for visitors to contribute their experiences of after-images, dream-images, floaters and memories to be part of this expanding project. They will find out more strange and wonderful names of different perceptions and will be asked if these everyday experiences help or hinder how we relate to the world and each other. What do we have in common? What is unique to us as individuals?

The idea began when Nichola Bruce was awarded a National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (Nesta) fellowship to study perception. Nesta was conceived in 1998 partly thanks to the vision of Oscar-winning director David Puttnam, who recognised the UK’s failure to capitalise on its globally recognised talent for innovation and invention.

“We made 26 films to explore layers of perception,” Marshall said. “We started from a personal point of view, playing with separating individual processes that usually work as a whole to create a sense of seamless reality.

“When you break it down to blinking, the water around your eyes, the circadian rhythms of the eyeballs, the way light travels through the eye, the jelly, the electricity, the brain synapses, the memories, you appreciate the infinite, wondrous, multi-faceted ways we interpret the world. What separates us and what joins us together. Sometimes we seem like funny little machines. It’s a fantastic subject.”

“Seeing is such a personal experience that it’s almost impossible for us to navigate new science about the mind. It’s an exploding field, just keeping up with it,” according to Bruce. “This project partly evolved through conversations with Nesta mentor, the late Richard Gregory, about what you first see as a baby in a pram and the generation of your first memories. It’s very interesting what you remember – small things like the corner of a piece of fabric, a pet or a first toy.”

Teaming up with VR producer Christos Hatjoullis, this experimental lab is supported by Screen South’s Artist Showcase scheme to investigate ideas for a fully developed VR piece The Strangeness of Seeing Immersive.

The processes of perceiving the world as a fluid whole are broken down into an experience full of questions and renewed wonder.

Bring all the family, share our common differences, come and be part of it.

Strangeness of Seeing Experimental
Electro Studios, Seaside Road
Saint Leonards-on-Sea TN38 0AL
Saturday 11 January 12pm-7pm
Sunday 12 January 1pm –3pm

www.rebeccaemarshall.com 
www.dearfuturefilms.com

Also in: Arts News