Looking down I see up. (2020)

“…experience is made possible by the meeting of the perceptive system and the world, but actually located at the object perceived, identical with it even; experience is the same thing as the object.”

In this digital semester (that came as a result of the global Pandemic of COVID-19) my focus got directed to expanding as a form of liberation from the circumstance we are in. The enforced lockdown came with restrictions that inhibited us from following our established routines. Routines that involved riding the Bus or Subway, interact with people in your Work/Study place or meet your friends for a drink. After the first weeks of Lockdown fear and worry had no end in sight, the only thing we could do was Isolate ourselves in our confined Living space. A living space that I considered Home for its calmness and peace after a long day of interactions and experiences. A place that allowed me privacy while also feeling freedom. A space that perfectly contradicted the energy and flow of the outside World.

Though without the outside interaction, Home becomes a confinement. You start counting minutes, hours, days and weeks go by. Being trapped in the same surroundings and with the same objects, same circumstances. I start to become aware of the lifelessness of everything around us. The boredom in isolation induced a state of paranoia that led me to a forced closer observation of my Space. My brain started picking out annoyances and irregularities in detail trough-out my environment. In this state of mind I tend to emerge in a perception where feeling and thoughts are magnified, since there are no other situations to compare/contradict these feelings with, I start to become my environment. I start to become as dull as my surroundings. Making small, usually irrelevant actions escalate in importance and magnitude, thus creating an illusion of dimensionality.

In particular, my attention gravitated towards the faucet in my Bathroom. Since my move to this apartment, about 8 Months ago, I’ve occasionally noticed water dripping from the tap but always neglected it by turning it shut just a little bit harder. It was only until now that I couldn't stand the drops anymore. Thinking I had shut the Tap properly only to find out minutes later it was still dripping.. I felt as if I the drops were a ticking clock that slowed down time even further. It was driving me insane, the constant anxiety of going to the bathroom only to check if the leaking had stopped. It became my obsession, my mission to ask or to check if the faucet was closed hard enough for the water to stop dripping. These water drops became my Universe, they became my only concern and occupation.

In order to visualise the dimension of the water drop and the impact it had on me during the lockdown I wanted a way of presenting its magnitude. By using a suspended water drop and a laser shining through it, a magnified projection of the drop is seen on the wall behind it. A telescope is used to project water drops onto my living space. A water drop will intermittently fall over the path of a laser, magnifying its contents and thus turning my obsession a reality.