Johanna Strobel

My Heart is not a Clock (Martha), 2022

VR experience for Mobil VR and WebVR

My heart is not a Clock (Martha) is a 3D-animated immersive video exploring directions of time with the absent being a counterpart to the temporal present (like the past is to the future). Situated in a stylized version of the Villa Farnesina in Rome, a building which’s atrium displays wall frescos showing grey empty pedestal- the mere present of the absent- the voiceover narration loosely follows the history of Martha, the last passenger pigeon before and beyond their extinction and their possible future de-extinction through cloning throughout the circle of time. Starting out from a starry night, stars form into a sphere with a bird-shaped pattern that encloses the viewer while the sun rises and the pattern dissolves.Rising from the ashes, the Italian Renaissance villa slowly assembles itself, only to collapse into dust once more. Interlocking and swirling in unison, Passengers flock to the reincarnated site, only to disappear moments later. The suns sets and the sphere, which once again manifested around the viewer dissolves again into the night sky.

 

360 Video, 5:26 min, 5.7k

 

Funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media of Germany 

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VIDEO LINK

ABOUT THE ARTIST

My work is concerned with “grand” themes and unwieldy concepts like time and space, information and power, entropy, (conceptual) geometry, language and the creation, attribution and suspension of (linguistic) meaning. Time is the framework for all these concepts and the modes I use to explore them like logic, repetition, and recurrence. Based on elective affinity I investigate objects and structures of reality and culture and the perception and precipitation of these concepts in everyday life. I enjoy abstract thought and figurative representation and am equally interested in fictitious truthy concepts and scientific facts. I work in a variety of media including sculpture, installation, painting, video, and VR. Across these media, my works share ideas, aesthetics, or motifs. I use traditional materials, readymade objects, digital methods and technology, and am attracted to cliché, pop and consumer aesthetics, info graphics, ambiguity and “neutrality”. I employ humor, witty explorations, seductive aesthetics, and personal narratives towards the suspension of meaning.

Most of my work starts out in digital space, which for me doesn’t functions as medium or subject matter but as a paradigm and as a tool. The technical processes and material properties I employ to create work, relate to and produces the concepts I explore dialectically. I renegotiate and challenge perception and allow for reorientation within shifted temporal, linguistic and spatial logic.

If you are interested in exhibiting or viewing this artistic VR experience, please send an email to us.

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