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Infinity Island explores psychedelic art, architecture, surrealism, and physics. 

This 3D model was inspired by video-game design, post-apocalyptic science-fiction/fantasy films, as well as real-world concepts that have either been realized or are still in progress. In Milan, architect Stefano Boeri’s prototypes for “smog-eating, vertical forests” were built, while in search of environmental solutions to pollution. Since the construction of the first of these plant-covered towers in 2017, many versions have also been conceived in China. (Gibson) Trickster practice is present in my experiments, with the use of photoshop; For me, it is an illusionist’s tool. I repurpose found objects and create digital tiles that cover the walls of my building prototypes. The tiles came from photographs of a Chinoiserie-style vase. Using replicas of replicas is important to my concept of the infinity. 

“Postmodernism articulates this as the death of the subject, the repudiation of outside reality and meta-narratives, the illusion of language, and the failure of rationality to understand the world. It has led to an imagistic world overloaded with information where a crisis of representation means there are only copies, images for which no original exists (similacrum), resulting in endless commodification and consumerism. The unity of the self is replaced by multiple selves.” (From Understanding to Creating Curriculum. Grimmet & Halvorson, p246)

This research is driven by fascination with the hermeneutic loop, in the hope that Infinity Island reads as self-referencing. My imagination is alive with the playfulness of the inner child and due to an overactive mind, I tend to crawl up the walls: searching for connections and solutions. I want to dial into a particular childhood memory: laying on your back and pretending to walk on the ceiling, stepping over the thresholds at entryways. I am influenced by ideas of the geometrically sound, but physically impossible, like Maurit C. Escher’s.

Infinity Island is absurd in its existence - a sustainable building model in a post-human world: who is benefiting and at what point did we hand over our entire purpose of survival to machines? These instances allow the viewer to reflect on our participation on the planet, by presenting them with an imaginary one: vastly creative and yet incredibly mundane. All the issues that present themselves with the over-use of artificial intelligence. I want to bring us back to a process-focused practice, rather than one that simply glorifies the output.

“Animism is a combination of Shintoism and Buddhism and accepts that deity/kami exists in all beings. Shinto stresses relation and connectedness, emphasizing internal over external relations, where each part is reflected in the whole, and the whole is evident in every part.” (qtd. In Mumcu & Yilmaz, p5)

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