Drifting Beetle, 2021
Materials 2ch Projection, Computer“Drifting Beetle“ is a two channel video installation that depicts the struggle of an insect facing impending death. The work explores the anxieties of the uncontrollable currents of life through the desperate motion of a beetle’s insignificant existence in a diametrical situation between life and death.
Working from actual footage of a beetle caught in a swimming pool sweeping toward the drain, “Drifting Beetle” recontextualizes this predicament within a virtual environment. Inspired by the great oppression of life throughout, the work explores the value of hope, frustration, and existence. Juxtaposed projections superimposed images of the beetle struggling in the grid-tiled swimming pool, which is extremely artificial and modern structure, with the beetle walking through its favorite place the nature that life flashes before the beetle's eyes.
Audiences in front of the projection can separate the overlaid images through their own shadows. Seeing their shadows projected in this way involves the audience in the relative positioning of the beetle within the virtual landscapes; pool and meadow, ripples and distorted tiles.
