Reimagining Empathy: Digital Direction Graduate Projects 2019

Staring down from the walls of the gallery, the first thing you see in Paul Mortimore’s I’ll Never Lie to You is the face of Elvis, hot pink neon against the white wall. Gathered like disciples underneath are a collection of 1950s salon hairdryers, their chairs clad in pale lemon vinyl, accompanied by faded vintage magazines. Out of speakers come a mix of Elvis hits, tinny and distant, and the rounded vowels of north-east England; snatches of conversation, murmured gossip. It is art that seeks to transform the viewer’s perceptions; it is less concerned with changing minds than it is with realising narratives. 

It’s this sense of realisation that drives many of the works in the exhibition, despite the varying modes of communication. Bian Yx’s The Vast uses virtual and augmented reality to explore the ways in which technology has altered our perception of depth and space. Incorporating a screen interface with motion capture technology, his animated avatar twists and turns with the user’s movement. The work explores the gap between our lived experiences of negotiating space with their equivalent representation on screen. 

A fascination with the way in which technology and form intersect also informs Daeun Alice Kim’s The story of the rabbit, which was edited in different ways for viewers watching in 3D or 2D. The story of the rabbit is based on oral South Korean folk tales collected in the book Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms, with the rabbit traditionally representing a lower social class. In this work, Daeun imagines an alternative version where the rabbit ceases to be subjugated and instead acts as our protagonist. The different experiences of watching the film in 3D and 2D underline the repurposed text, forcing us to reconsider our relation to narrative and technology. 

Tongzhou Yu’s Murder on the YokAI Line also uses 3D animation to foreground narrative. An immersive theatre production, his work centres on the figure of the Yokai, a mischievous apparition from Japanese and Chinese culture. The production is a murder mystery set on the fictional YokAI underground line, with an authoritarian human government demanding the immediate death of all AI subjects after a human is murdered. The setting borrows the aesthetic of London’s tube stations, using our familiarity with the tiled, low-ceilinged passageways to create a sense of unease. Subverting our associations with the brightly lit, highly populated area by using dissonant sounds and dim, flickering lights, the work highlights the disparity and explore the gap between the real and the simulated. 

Although virtual reality is a popular medium in the Digital Direction exhibition, many students have used more traditional art forms. Milda Samsonaite’s piece Ghosts in the Web is installed along an entire corridor, with semi-transparent bodies hanging from the ceiling and standing enveloped between layers of clear plastic, bound by threads. Working with Recovery Connections rehabilitation centre, Milda recorded workshops and testimonies from people recovering from addiction, which she broadcasted from speakers contained within the figures in her installation. The space becomes a component of the piece: forcing the viewer to walk through it to reach the other side, Milda is directly aligning us with the journey of recovery. 

Tangibility is also prioritised in Sofia Molinaro’s work, Walking With Giants. The piece consists of two projects facing each other through five delicate sheets of gauze, each playing a film containing shots of grazing rhinos, the vast expanse of the African savanna, men with guns walking through the bush. The work seeks to examine how humans have come to oppose our fellow animals, driving other creatures to extinct purely for our own gain. The defining image of the video is the moment where a man tenderly rests his hand on the side of a dying rhino’s face, stroking its cheek. When projected onto the fabric it appears ghostly; the multiple layers of gauze providing a visual echo that slowly fades 

Despite the variety of works contained within the exhibition – from David Glueck’s musical icosahedrons to Yasmina Salame’s interactive platform to share Lebanese recipes – it’s obvious that this year’s Digital Direction graduates are united by their interest in the possibilities of human perception, of how we tell stories to one another. In a cultural landscape where digital artwork is often seen as impersonal or focused solely on technology, 2019’s cohort demonstrate the radical empathy that digital communication can engender.