how to get from here to there

This project is a poetic documentary and essay film about displacement and loneliness in the modern world and the seemingly impossible fantasy of a better reality. This work relies on appropriation in both image and sound in order to create something that is at once familiar but unknown.

Security camera footage of empty spaces and liminal spaces serve as a metaphor for the feeling of alienation in the modern world. This is contrasted with utopic vistas that are both desirable but distant and artificial. This work documents the feeling of displacement from the reality that one is trapped in and presents the dream of a utopic home as an impossible fantasy. I will use images of empty and sterile spaces, accompanied by a sparse and haunting soundscape. This will be contrasted with lively and vibrant CGI imagery (appropriated from 90s CGI tech demo videos). The use of these retro CGI images also (much like in traditional vaporwave) interrogates the emptiness of nostalgia, and the artifice of the world which we are nostaligic for.

Using post-vaporwave sounds and visuals (i.e., deconstructing elements from vaporwave such as slowed down and pitch-shifted muzak, retro CGI imagery, and an exploration of an artificial utopia), I am examining the tension between an empty and uninviting reality and a welcoming and pleasurable fiction.

www.dummymag.com/news/adam-harper-vaporwave/

FEATURE: Vaporwave, what is it and why should you care?

By extension, I will also explore the liminal space in between documentary and fiction. On one hand, I am appropriating images that were made with the intention of being solely documents in their function and using them to explore emotions and atmosphere. On the other hand, I am also appropriating images with no indexical relationship to the real world but using them as though they were documents of a different reality. Through this, I explore the tension between the two extremes of the filmic image. And through this tension, I hope to express the dialogue between the tragedy of an alienating reality and the tragedy of a utopia that cannot be.