Untitled Apocalypse : strategies in polyopia

Abstract

I introduce frames for further examining the polyopic lens: environment, performance, and narrative. I suggest prescriptive strategies for building this type of work: multi-focal construction, invoking multiplicity; attention to depth of field, considering rupture points between immersion and alienation; and the mechanisms of light refraction, looking to the projected image. I contextualize these strategies through historical practices by other artists, and discuss my own past work leading up to the ideas behind polyopia. Untitled Apocalypse then arrives, with a walk through of the experience and descriptions of its sculptural tableaus, crashing kinetic sculpture, solar-powered installation, "live show" hosted by inanimate objects, and a collection of films. I then re-examine these attempts toward a "polyopic art work", whether Untitled Apocalypse was effectively a polyopic work, and whether the exhibition experience was effectively communicated overall.

Untitled Apocalypse arrived to EMPAC in February of 2013 as a live exhibition experience combining multimedia installation, performances, and a collection of short films. This paper examines Untitled Apocalypse through the lens of polyopia, considered medically as a disordered perceptual experience of multi-vision, and considered here as a "re-ordered" conceptual experience of additive uncertainty. The condition of the polyopic lens becomes a guide for thinking through a multidisciplinary form I describe as "the polyopic art work". I propose that constructing an artwork through the polyopic lens, as attempted through Untitled Apocalypse, opens considerable possibilities for communicating stories and concepts that are inherently unresolvable.