Document Type
Article
Publication Date
Fall 2017
Abstract
"In 2006, in the course of an Artists Residency in Munich I made a video triptych titled Meditations on the Tiger, in which a story unfolds over three adjacent screens... The story is as linear as it can get, but working with three screens I found I could move laterally as well... There were multiple tracks of time running together on that train - the real time of action and event, the hurtling projected time of anticipation and expectation, and the deep, reflective time of memory, thought and speech. 3 video timelines synchronized so we begin to approach image, just as we have learnt to approach sound (with Stereo and Dolby) as highly differentiated. A close up and a long shot, detail and vista could be shown at the same time – differences in magnitude or quantitative differentiation. At the same time stillness and motion - qualitative differences, opposites even - could be reconciled and balanced. Space, time and mode had all been rendered fluid.
Of course I knew none of this when I began... What I did carry in with me though was the ancient Indian notion of the third eye. The eye with which the past, present and future are all viewed with the same sense of equanimity. This idea I used - as inspiration not application - to compose and distribute the action variously across the three screens,though never in a fixed way. And when I finally braided the timelines together I came to realize, that this third eye is not an eye at all but the mind! The triptych made tangible for me what was only an abstract idea till then.
Recommended Citation
Soudhamini. "The Fluid Gaze in Virtual Reality." Anastamos, vol. 2, no. 1, 2017. https://anastamos.chapman.edu/index.php/portfolio-item/the-fluid-gaze-in-virtual-reality/
Copyright
The author
Included in
Film Production Commons, Hindu Studies Commons, Other Film and Media Studies Commons, Other Religion Commons, Philosophy of Mind Commons, Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons, South and Southeast Asian Languages and Societies Commons, Visual Studies Commons
Comments
Soudhamini is a Visiting Fulbright-Nehru Scholar in the Dodge College of Film and Media Arts. A brief bio is included as an additional file below.
This article was an invited submission originally published in Anastamos, volume 2, issue 1, in 2017.
Though they are also embedded in the PDF of the article itself, a streaming video of Meditations on the Tiger and a GIF of the author in a virtual experience are viewable below.