Umwelten
Exploring ideas surrounding the phenomenology of perception, this project aims to investigate the idea of interconnection within Nature. I have drawn influence from philosophical thinkers such as Donna Haraway and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, as well as the work of zoologist JakobVon Uexküll and his hermeneutic ideas about the animal. According to Uexküll, each being has its own individual Umwelt, which is specific to how it senses and reacts to its surrounding environment. Nature as a whole consists of multitudes of overlapping Umwelten, creating an interconnected symphony, not just between life forms, but with all other aspects of the natural world also. A series of resin pieces are presented illuminated in a web of interconnection constructed with light and space, highlighting the invisible connections between multiple Umwelten that make up our Universe. Interested in Humanity’s relationship to our own perceptual Umwelt, I have deliberately created a space in which it is impossible for the viewer to navigate without having an effect on the form of the artworks. It is incredibly difficult to escape an anthropocentric point of view when approaching other elements within nature; we are constantly casting a human shaped shadow into the worlds of other life forms that we interact with. Passing through the space, the viewer’s presence causes an obstruction in the projections, resulting in an interaction between viewer, artwork, and space - a Plato’s Cave of traces and shadows.
