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- Julie McLoughlin
Julie
McLoughlin
Sub|saturate
Michel Foucault defines the concept of Utopia as ‘sites that have an inverted analogy with the real space of Society. Utopias are fundamentally unreal spaces, counter-sites, a placeless place.’
Sub|saturate explores Foucault’s concept, capturing the artist’s experiences of disassociation as a result of the over saturation of media. The work simulates being part of nature but to a heightened level as a way of grounding oneself in the environment. We experience a hyper-sensory space as though through the eyes of another – that of an insect, submerged by magnified plants, and with a heightened sense of texture and UV colour. The sound is amplified in order to replicate the sensory world of an insect.
Sub|saturate creates a contradictory space. There is an ironic duality of real and fabricated space where the viewer experiences nature through digital media.The visuals are immersive yet captured through a filter so the materiality of the film is visible and the viewer is aware they are part of an installation. All senses feel secondary. The viewer will, (as Foucault describes when experiencing Heterotopia), ‘see (themselves) there where (they are) not, in an unreal, virtual space that opens up behind the surface.’
He says, ‘It enables me to see myself there where I am absent.’