“Soft Waters”
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Title:
- Soft Waters
Artist(s) and People Involved:
Symposium:
- ISEA2024: 29th International Symposium on Electronic Art
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Venue(s):
Artist Statement:
Soft Waters is a story of water and time.
A water goddess bathes at her temple on a lake in the mouth of an ancient volcano. 30,000 years ago, as the volcano went dormant, she came down with the rainwater. She exists here forever between droplets of time.
As the volcano contemplates extinction, a majestic shipwreck fondly recollects past conversations with cormorants, childish non-human animals ask questions about their ancestry, and an ancient forest speaks across eras about the benefits of a slow existence. Led by a precocious priestess, a mesmerised group of humans form a cult and dance in the honour of the goddess. Several millennia later, their descendants are still dancing, intoxicated, in the afterparty of an eco-rave, unknowingly competing to become the next priestess of the lake.
The water goddess watches patiently over all of them. Up high, on the tallest crest of the volcano, satellites search distant planets for alien gods and bodies of water.
Soft Waters is an experimental video game presented as a triptych with each screen synchronised to a different moment in time. Using a game controller, the viewer plays the role of the shapeshifting water goddess to explore the mythology of the lake.
The piece is influenced by the Hydrofeminism of Astrida Neimanis which reminds us that we are all bodies of water on a watery planet. She writes, “As watery, we experience ourselves less as isolated entities and more as oceanic eddies: I am a singular dynamic whirl dissolving in a complex, fluid circulation.” Soft Waters is an exploration of non-linear time and place through the circulation of watery bodies. Here, water is a time machine that connects all moments in one fluid continuum.
