Swim


2017 - present


Swim is an on-going project exploring several conceptual prompts:


  1. Filth and the perception of hygiene - The signature smell of the swimming pool is actually a mixture of chlorine, sweat, oil and urine. More than a mere sign of disinfectant, it is the evidence of human contact with such disinfectant.
  2. Moments of complete connection of one’s bodily interior and the pool environment: drowning in the pool, urinating in the pool.
  3. Swimming pool as a risk-controlled environment, domesticated water. The implication that death is kept at bay, that turbulence is eradicated. Swimming pools with track marks also functions as a measurement tool for physical fitness.
  4. Swimming lessons, which fundamentally teaching someone a completely new way to navigate space with a different set of physics. Some pedagogy would let the swimmer cultivate trust in this environment, in their senses and coordination, in the instructor’s guidance. Other pedagogy would completely betray that trust and rely on the swimmer’s survival instinct to avoid drowning.



Swimming Lessons
Music: Waltz No.2 - Dimitri Shostakovich
The most recent exposure of this project was in Mykonos Multimedia Festival 2018. It was included in the screening section curated by Snow Yunxue Fu. The animation and its related VR experience demo was debuted in the screening, Über-Marionettes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago on December 16, 2017.


Live Demo
If you’re interested in the full screening event, click here to see the full documentation in the moderator, Snow Yunxue Fu’s Vimeo page.


Swim_MusicVideo
As a part of the experiment process, I created the following looping animation.

Music: Only You - The Flying Pickets



Other Experimentations: