The Fundamental Dimension

The inspiration was sparkled when I was editing Obsession. As it’s suggested in Obsession that “it is a proceeding process”, the idea of “process” caught my attention — I started wondering if  “time” can be used as another dimension of evaluating the pattern of my vision, for which how it might have shifted and evolved overtime, as well as the relationship between time and memory. In fact, there has been a trace of utilizing “time” as a motif in Obsession, where the shadow of objects were clues linking to time and location. Locations, meanwhile, somewhat resemble the events that shaped my memory and was then elaborated in this piece.

The linkage between time and memory was the first I thought through. Memory, I believe, is firstly shaped by events, and the nature of these events would determine whether it is “memorable” or not. Inspired by German psychologist Hermann Ebbinhaus’ theory on memory, for which there seems to be a regular pattern of how events are memorized, I presumed that events with specific nature would trigger specific type of memory. As events must take place within a timespan, I then came up with the analogy of considering time as the “width” and memory as the “depth”. Revolving this idea, how the concept can be communicated visually is the following question. Music and film were the two media I initially thought about as both of the media utilize time as the fundamental dimension. Since, to me personally, the initial experience with most events were visual (constantly photographing), I decided to utilize the locations of photographs within Obsession and present time and memory through motion-picture.

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2020