- A S T R O G A T E - By Lorna Pratt
www.astrigate.eu
The aim of this project was to create an online exhibition that directly investigates the in-between spaces where the digital, physical and fictional overlap and interest. Throughout the website, visual imagery has been designed to address contemporary life through the exploration of ‘virtual’ spaces and question ‘what is our current experience of reality?’ The online exhibition opens the door to an alternative dimension, displaying visual spectacles of breath-taking theatrical quality and technical skill.
Astrogate seeks to create an immersive experience of cinematic quality, translating narrative and connecting to its audience on an emotional level.
In the contemporary world we inhabit today, the digital revolution has led to a shift in human perception, altering the dynamic of our everyday experience. Technology is used as a tool to connect ‘fiction’ and ‘reality’.
The creation of Astrogate touches upon our increasing dependence on the virtual world of the Internet; the place in which we inhabit today is something similar to a shadowy mirror space where two worlds collide. When these two separates; virtual and reality meet, what do we experience? One could argue that both these worlds are actually real, as the virtual digital world defiantly has an genuine impact on our physical lives. But for my purposes I would like to establish that this in-between space - which I want to define as the expanded mirror space we exist in most of the time nowadays - is a real space. It is this mirror-space, this land of the in-between that is visualized through out the exhibition. The mirror is after all, a utopia, since it is a placeless place. We see our self there where we are not, in the illusion of another space, which opens up beneath the surface of technology.
The enfolded nature of the surface and sometimes the generative abyss, which lies beneath, is communicated by medium of visual language. J.G Ballard suggests this new dimension of reality can be understood as "as kind of collective lucid dreaming."
***NO PHOTOSHOP OR SFX USED***