0.0D (Diopter Zero)
HD experimental 3D animation film
composited scene from after effectHD experimental 3D animation film - 04’37
An endless dream unfolding as an iterative sight-test loop, where the gaze is either compelled toward or becomes obsessed with a digitally altered motif: an autorefractor target image. The work explores vision itself, the machinery of seeing, and the mechanisms that structure seeing.
Content-wise, it continues the thread from the 2024 project Into the Digital Cartographic Void, extending its concerns with the loop of gaze (see and being seen), technological visuality in the digital realm, while adding new subjects drawn from contemporary digital aesthetics such as liminal space and dreamcore. Methodologically, the work adopts a more intuitive, personal, and material-oriented approach, moving away from the rigorously research-driven mode of my earlier projects. In simple terms, the plot unfolds through two characters whose repetitive digital interaction embodies anxiety and control, addressing how media-constructed visuality and representation gradually replace reality; how the individual’s perception of time and space becomes desynchronized within a highly mediated environment; and how, ultimately, the very concept of reality begins to collapse inward.
More details are being generated throughout the current making process. Beyond these conceptual and narrative dimensions, this project is, at its core, an embodied experiment in the production of visuality. Throughout the making process, I engage in a dialogue with the media and technologies I use: Blender, Houdini, motion capture, photogrammetry, and After Effects, negotiating with their affordances, limitations, agency and potentiality. This shift marks an adaptation in my personal methodology: from a previously theory- and research-driven approach toward one grounded in material practice and aesthetic exploration. Rather than merely critiquing the generative process or consuming the results of digital imagery, I now inhabit its production, observing closely what unfolds through my own intentional self-“cyborgization” and “informatization.”
This embodied engagement offers a deeper reflection on the intricate interrelationship between artificial visuality and the perception of reality. I regard the 3D world as far more than a mimicry of the real: much like how media once functioned as passive carriers, digital tools have evolved to reveal their own embedded agency as active participants in the ability to shaping and challenging. For instance, the evolution of horror cinema, from depicting ghostly blurriness to employing technical glitches as signs of the abnormal, illustrates this shift in visual logic.