Substance Of Magic.
Conducted during my master’s, this project explored the personal experience around gender and sexuality.
Grounded in social and cultural thematic research around the bisexual experience, the project developed very much into a practice-based approach.
Photogrammetry and Virtual Reality sculpting was used as a tool to explore fluid gender attributes. In an interesting twist, gender-specific attributes seemed to loosen when translating the physical self into the digital self. The portraits coupled with poetry aim to represent the feeling of floating between communities whilst also challenge a sense of belonging and seeking to feel ‘whole’.
“If bisexuality is regarded as a matter of heterosexuality and homosexuality, for example, does it mark a boundary which separates homosexuality from heterosexuality, or does it rather unite them?”
— Merl Storr (1999)
The project developed further and explored how self-identity is constructed through a combination of personal and external factors, including the digital space. Despite the human hand involved in its co-creation, the image is shaped by the machine. It captures the disconnect between the digital and the real and the impossible-to-reach perfection in finding – and portraying – oneself. In an attempt to visualise this multifaceted experience, the 3D point-cloud imagery was digitally printed onto textile, and then worked back into using embroidery techniques.
“If someone can find their sexual place in the world and be comfortable there then they can get on with the other important parts of life (being creative, useful, generous, kind etc.) without always having to struggle to be understood - or to understand themselves.”
— Mae Martin (2019)