I Feel so Good
2023
00:08:08 min
pashayasmin-sofia
Film still from I Feel so Good.
Pasha: I guess throughout the whole video I did feel quite disorientated… very much so.
Yasmin: Yes! I wrote that down as well. I said I felt motion sick.
P: When it’s in the digital landscape, it’s the zooming in on things and quick pan, and then obviously the fish eye lens of the run in the field. But on the other hand, I kind of felt a bit of the comfort of the digital landscape.
Y: Because it’s like a video game?
P: Yeah, it kind of reminds you of, you know, early 2000s games. Which I played a fair bit.
Y: That’s interesting because I also felt that way. I think the first time I watched it, and maybe this was a little bit because of the sound as well, but I felt fearful. I think because I was out of my body in a way. I felt like my view… I wasn’t in control of my space, and I was out of my body and I was experiencing movement that’s not natural to me. Obviously like a bird's eye view, but then going through the textures is really unnatural and it’s very jarring when your natural brain expects you to stop at the rock face.
P: Oh to me, the going through the textures, although disorientating I did feel very much submerged into the realm. Then when you go through these rocks it kind of throws you, ‘cause you see the grey texture of the polygon mesh. You kind of forget, where we are. The last bit threw me the most, when the video zooms out onto the desktop, you realise we’re not there.
Y: So you felt like you were immersed the whole time, until that point?
P: Yeah. Maybe that does come from gaming. Like that 3D landscape is a natural space.
Y: But it’s also not all in the virtual.
P: I guess there’s a blend between both, and the avatars.
Y: Yeah, a blend.
P: I feel the shifts from digital to real, and the other way, and the avatar blending
Y: There was a point where, in the virtual space, it was all first person perspective. Then it suddenly becomes third person when they have that avatar in there. The shift then, from it being me, to it being someone else… but that someone else may be also me.
P: I guess that's what it’s speaking about. About us creating different layers of ourselves and watching those layers, and you’re directly watching a layer of you.
Y: It felt really natural to see that version in the virtual world where you view yourself as an avatar, but then there was a link in the real space because we were viewing the person there from the third person later on. It was gamifying the real world.
P: Gamifys the self? I feel like the video throws you around quite a bit. From real to digital, from beautiful vista to close up on a rock, and from first person perspective to third person, which does throw you with discomfort.
Y: I also felt like I was being detached and reattached to the video. So immersed and then the perspective changes, but you become reimmersed in the perspective. Each change detaches you from it, it’s like it's shocking your body.
P: Yes, that’s how it felt, very much. It does make me feel a different way too. It makes me think about games where you go to a different planet to explore. Very much similar landscapes, maybe with a black sky.
Y: It makes me remember when I was at uni, someone told me that they spent a lot of time in VR gaming headsets and as a result when they were walking to uni, they would try to teleport up the hill.
P: 100%, you do get that. That melding and blending of your own perception is very real. I remember in particular during uni when I’d work in modelling software for a good 8 hours straight, and in that particular software when you select something it has a ‘gumball’, like a select tool with arrows so you can drag something along its axes. Then you put your laptop away and you look around and you see that gumball on objects. For just a split second when you look somewhere, it does appear.
Y: It does really affect your vision.
P: Yes, because you’re off the screen but you’re still very much mentally in that space. Clearly, even from, I suppose retina memory?
Y: Like a shadow in your eyes.
P: Yes, like when you look at a light for too long then look around and it appears, it’s similar. I guess that’s what watching this felt too.
Y: As if there was a shadow of each world as it changes.
P: Yes, like what you were saying about them blending reminded me of that experience.
Y: The video as well keeps referring to birds.
P: What does that make you feel? Birds are the fish of the sky.
Y: Yes, they are. The sky is the birds’ domain. The birds thing was making me think, because obviously when you’re navigating the digital world in the beginning, it is, mainly I would say, a bird's eye view. A bird’s eye view is also just a perspective that is naturally inaccessible to us.
P: I see what you mean, actually it did make me think, at the beginning, of the flying perspective of the landscape, from the bird's eye view. Which as you say is not accessible to us, so you create it in the computer and enjoy it there.
Y: Do you think we’re jealous of the birds?
P: Oh 100%. Humans are jealous of anyone. Anyone who can do what we can’t.
Y: I was also looking at the video later, when there were real birds in the background, do you remember?
P: Yeah.
Y: I was just thinking about those birds.
P: They don’t even know about this. They’re just up there.
Written by Pasha Jeremenko,
Architectural designer specialising in residential buildings, with a focus on integrating digital media into the architectural design process
and Yasmin Jones
Cultural worker who occasionally creates post photographic objects which explore the ecology of the digital realm