Systematic Illusions

“We look together but we see apart.” Inner representations of aesthetic experience are as unique as every living being; mediated by perception and processed by our mind. They are dictated by the neuronal imprint of living; our experiences, especially our traumas. Inner representations constitute a place where experiences are accumulated, summed-up, decomposed and recomposed to create the systematic illusion of each one’s own reality. This work was inspired by biology lab work and detailed observation of animals; that remind us of the many factors that influence what we call reality and how easily they can be manipulated. In this short trilogy archival footage, including Harry Harlow’s Monkey Maternal Deprivation Experiments(1959), Radioactive Beauty Treatments(1950s), Roscoe Holcomb & Wade Ward’s “Moonshiner”(1962), “Magia Lucana”(1958), Pham Duy’s “Nhan Danh”(1965), are used as the “objective” starting points, which are then mixed up -through audiovisual collage- to visualize the artist’s “subjective” sense of Love, Beauty, and Death. Dedicated to Ulrike Ferle; a cat and so much more.

Vanessa Ferle (GR)
“An interdisciplinary female human, born by the sea, combining arts, design and science; through experimentations, correlations, and collisions.” Vanessa Ferle is an artist, graphic designer and neuroscientist based in Athens, Greece. She has studied biology, neuroscience, digital arts and new media arts. Her research focuses on the animal essence that automation, machines and smart technologies infuse into digital art, and the emotional response of humans to this animal-effect.