MATTERIALIZE
(2021)
|matərɪəlʌɪzˈ|
manifesting the human mind
"Distinction between the mental and the physical is false. It is an illusion created by the brain. Everything we know, whether it is about the physical or the mental world, comes to us through our brain."
Chris Frith, Making up the Mind: How the Brain Creates Our Mental World, 2007
Our idea of reality comes to through our brain. But the brain's connection with what is physical is not so different from the brain's ideas and imagination.
Our brain creates the illusion that we have direct contact the physical world, and at the same time, creates the illusion that our mental world is isolated and private. These two illusions let us experience reality in our own way and explaining how the brain creates the mind.
MATTERIALIZE is a multimedia sculpture that shows how our brain creates scenarios and images on abstract thoughts.
The over scaled representation of a human face symbolizes the physicality of our mind while the projection mapping, constantly evolving and changing scenario, represent the power of the intangible. The thoughts that through imagination unfold worlds and knowledge in an abstract and artistic way.
"Our perceptions are fantasies that coincide with reality. " - Chris Frith
The technique used to make this sculpture well represent the mind process of approaching reality. The model was firstly made through Virtual Reality and then translated into physical design by folding together huge pieces of paper.
VR is based on imaginary, design and cognitive perceptions of reality and has a link to our mind sensitivity and to the development of our inner scenario. Like our mind, Virtual Reality creates a closed environment where we have the simulation of control through images and visuals. The difficulties come out when we try to merge our imagination with the physical world. As soon as the VR design was translated into paper, it was clear that it needed to be deconstructed and simplified in order to exist. The same happens with our imagination and the safe world we construct before facing the reality.
The choice of developing the idea through paper modelling - pepakura - was moved by the desire to find a tool that shows all the design steps at once. Thanks to this technique, the idea starts from a concept, evolving into an image, a projection, a 2D design and ends up in a 3D sculpture.
These structures mediate the act of perception, in the same way that the neurological structures create pictures of the world and processes the 2D image through the retina, adds depth and models the 3D vision.
MATTERIALIZE was part of the IMMATTER : into the human mind 2021 exhibition that happened in Barcelona at Espronceda institute of art and culture.
The exhibition was an experiential journey inside our brain. Starting in between the left and the right hemispheres, deep inside the gray matter where the neuronal connections happen. Set at the end of the neuronal labyrinth, as a stage background, MATTERIALIZE represented the end of the path where the mind expresses itself through images - projection mapping - showing both its physical and abstract aspects. A moment of self-awareness to step outside ourselves, to introspect, reflect and have a theory of what the mind is.
A momentum of mind manifestation through its matter materialization.
‘‘To be conscious that we are perceiving or thinking is to be conscious of our own existence.’’ - Aristotle
CREDITS:
Ideated, designed, and produced with Tobi and Lucía Redondo
Visuals by Dilara Baskoylu
Video edit by Ayberk Çelik