Chroma Key

Heidegger Response - Tunnel Vision

Artist Statement

This piece is a response to Heidegger’s fears about technology taking over our basis of life and our overall mentality. He feared that technology could be a means to stagnation in our lives and goals if we never question things about it and our lives. After all, the key to overcoming this problem with technology, according to Heidegger, is to ask questions.

The concept I’ve created represents the world Heidegger fears. It is a very stagnant performance piece meant to show the boring cycle of life by coming to a “tunnel vision” perspective of using technology. Everything in the room that is not technology or holding technology is covered in garbage bags. This concept was inspired by the land art by Christo and Jean-Claude who continually used coverings to cover up pieces of land or act as curtains and fences to our line of sight. To me, this was inspiring as it spoke to me as a sort of blind spot in our line of sight. I used this concept similarly in order to portray how the person in the video does not pay attention to her surroundings. As a step further, there are 3 people who are covered in white sheets to further point out this fact. The person is not paying attention to anything outside of the technology she is using.

The idea behind this was to point out how mundane everyday life could be in this kind of life. You are not going anywhere outside your room, your bubble, your personal space. The only things you acknowledge are the technology you play with from the cell phone you wake up to and fall asleep with to the television you play games on and watch movies with.

As much as technology helps us and is a major influence, we do need to acknowledge that we cannot live a day-to-day life in this manner. Many of us like to do interactive things in other places or talk to other people. This kind of life is very boring after awhile, and I do not believe we will be headed in this direction. We have as humans the desire to explore, to talk to others, and the natural curiosity to ask questions about our lives and make decisions according to it.