Erik Soriano BFA Video + Sound Thesis Spring 2024
Welcome to Susurrations: Oceans of Whispering Dark, Showers of Sparkling Light. This installation work creates a space for exploring sensory input as a gentle bath of visions, sound, and textures. The crystalline forms gentle fabric slopes, mirrored platonic solids, and bodies of driftwood create a hypnagogic dreamscape, washed in waves of whisper and warm synth tones. The effect created is one I think of in juxtaposition to the modality of a sensory-deprivation tank, what I have come to call a sensory-immersion space.
The many channels of video output and the 4-channel audio output are designed as generative systems, continually combining, mixing, or selecting their respective individual elements in novel ways, so that no moment is ever repeated in exactly the same way. The main video screen consists of the output of three channels of video blended into one. This is supported by two independent auxiliary channels of video, while two more channels are projected against the sides of the do-disco-hedron, a dodecahedron with mirrored faces turning on a motor. This creates pentagonal reflections of the projection, which travel across the surfaces of the room. There are black-draped wire formations supporting 3D-printed crystal lamps, whose light reacts to the amplitude of the audio.