Dreams of Sublimation

The sky and the sea confront their digital counterparts in this two-channel video installation that poetically explores the tension between the natural and the technological. The work presents images of water and clouds that are digitally manipulated to create abstract juxtapositions between the natural referents and their digital artifacts. The elements of glitch-art that are integrated into the editing instill a feeling that the screens are malfunctioning-drawing attention to their materiality. Punctuated with moments of darkness, there is a sense that the installation is struggling to display its desired output; in a process of becoming; working to sublimate to a higher form. Dreams of Sublimation aims to inspire audiences to question their relationship to nature by presenting the complex entanglements between the natural world, its representation on screen as pixels, and the material substrate of those pixels. Highlighting the connections between the physical and the digital, Dreams of Sublimation additionally invites viewers to consider the earthen provenance of our media culture. The work functions equally as a purely sensorial experiences, instilling a sense of contemplation and unsettling wonder. Is the ocean dreaming of becoming digital, or is a computer simulation of water dreaming of spilling into physical reality? 

Jeremy Segal is a theatre and new media artist from Canada (Montréal). He is co-Artistic Director of Youtheatre—a 54-year-old company producing innovative work for young audiences—and co-Founder/Artistic Director of experimental theatre company Title 66 Productions. His new media work has been nominated for a 2018 International Lumen Prize, and presented as part of the 2020 International Symposium on Electronic Arts.