An abstract collage and exploration into online relationships and intimacy.

My video piece is inspired by the thoughts I had during a Saturday night when I saw a lot of my school friends who I haven't seen in over a year, and the confusion one faces when romantic love and friendship are mixed with each other. Despite the video trying to follow the thoughts I had during this event, there is really no chronological narrative or any figurative story that we can see, as the sound and images dislodge from each other but maintain an aesthetic of chaos that incorporates text and graphics. The process for the creation of this piece was quite different from my usual process as the audio is usually the last thing I add to my projects. Therefore the feeling that this work produces upon me is very different from what I usually feel. It was very interesting to see how creating an image based on a sound piece, instead of sound based on the visual work, can really change the end product. 

For the audio, I layered over 16 distinct audios, from found material and sounds I made myself. With the audio, I wanted to do a lot of layering and use a lot of different sounds as I often think about a lot of things at the same time, which is something that I tried to incorporate when creating the visual element as I edited and layered several images and text over each other. The audio piece intends to show what I was thinking during this encounter and focuses on my mix of emotions from excitement to confusion. I think the main focus of my work is trying to represent this idea of love and confusion in an abstract manner, as seeing my best friend who I haven’t seen since July 2019 brought a lot of romantic mixed feelings. The title of the work is based on this idea of how through technology we have been able to talk almost every day for the past year but have remained on other sides of the world and we had only seen each other in person that one Saturday. The audio and images allude to this idea of online relationships as I tried to incorporate sounds that range from a telephone ringing and the pouring of a drink to clips from songs I’ve recently listened to like “The Adults are Talking” by The Strokes and short monologues from two of my favorite movies, “Frances Ha” (2012) and “Love, Rosie” (2014). The monologues put into words this idea of confusion and love, and describe these ephemeral moments that two people can experience but are unable to describe. In a way I wanted to use media and solely technological means to translate the most human thing there is; personal interaction and human emotion. A translation to the language we have been using for a year and a way to show how in the end human interaction can’t be reduced to the tangible means of technology but remains to be abstract.  I hope to evoke this feeling of overwhelm and simultaneous excitement for the unknown and what is to come from this shifting relationship.