V.I.S.T.A.: TRANSMUTATIONIST FIELD JOURNAL

V.I.S.T.A.: TRANSMUTATIONIST FIELD JOURNAL:

What if the Origin of Species narrative occurred outside of the bounds of the social constructs of the Western, patriarchal, European and Victorian/colonialist framework available in 1831? What if Darwin’s primordial soup was a primordial ether, and consciousness was a self-generative digital apparition, defying binary classification? What if evolution is a mode of consciousness and Darwin’s early contributions existed concurrently with parallel, multitudinous inquiries into terrestrial experience across another expression of reality? The V.I.S.T.A.: Transmutationist Field Journal project was inspired through the artist’s personal orientation to the landscape, legacy and mythology of the American Southwest, psychodynamic theory, research into Natural Selection and the Darwin narrative; in particular expedition archives, travel logs and subsequent sociocultural critiques.

V.I.S.T.A.: Transmutationist Field Journal is a short original film composition (duration 5:32), featuring activated digital objects and a three-channel, interactive, narrative soundscape. Multiple simultaneous participants are invited to observe the projected film while wearing multi-channel Bluetooth headsets to become immersed in this visual-spatial-aural experience. Composite audio, photographic and video data has been gathered from the high desert mesa of Arroyo Hondo, New Mexico, in the American Southwest, to create this sensory-saturated experience. Community-sourced vocal samples (resulting from a call into the artist’s community in NM and beyond) from an original script have been manipulated to compose narration accompanying the video field journal itself. The digital object referenced in this work is part of the artist’s broader cataloging of her digital work over the last three years: Inspired by internal geometries and cellular landscapes, each object is familiar, yet unidentifiable. The V.I.S.T.A.: Transmutationist Field Journal project references themes of natural selection, naturalism, evolution, colonialism, Darwinism and altered human consciousness through the socially-activated collective; a creative, anti-racist and non-binary approach to the Origin of Species narrative.

V.I.S.T.A. is part of an ongoing arts-based, research project, within which there are multiple field journal “entries.”

Short Bibliography:

Darwin, C. (1989). The voyage of the Beagle. (J. Brown & M. Neve, Eds). Penguin Books. (Original work published 1839)

American Museum of Natural History. Pocket Diary (Journal) 1838-1881 (DAR 158). (n.d.). Retrieved March 1, 2023, from https://www.amnh.org/research/darwin-manuscripts/journals-diaries/journal-1838-1881

Peretó, J., Bada, J. L., & Lazcano, A. (2009). Charles Darwin and the origin of life. Origins of life and evolution of the biosphere : the journal of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life, 39(5), 395–406. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11084-009-9172-7

Rose S. (2009). Darwin, race and gender. EMBO reports, 10(4), 297–298. https://doi.org/10.1038/embor.2009.40

Dennis, R. M. (1995). Social Darwinism, Scientific Racism, and the Metaphysics of Race. The Journal of Negro Education, 64(3), 243–252. https://doi.org/10.2307/2967206
* JNE was published from 1932-2019 The Journal of Negro Education (JNE), a refereed scholarly periodical, was founded at Howard University in 1932 to fill the need for a scholarly journal that would identify and define the problems that characterized the education of Black people in the United States and elsewhere, provide a forum for analysis and solutions, and serve as a vehicle for sharing statistics and research on a national basis

https://jne.howard.edu/

Leith, Brian (Producer). (2009). Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life [Film]. BBC Natural History Unit; Open University.