Wishing Well

2021–22. Single channel video, color, sound. 13 minutes.

A myth is built around the exchange of a coin and a wish for immortality. Each human lives isolated in a completely fabricated environment that is encased in concrete and separate from cycles of consumption, waste, and environmental destruction. In this story a controlled specimen matures, labors, and expires during its eternally looping life cycle, building upon its humanity, knowledge, and creativity. Social experiences occur digitally through a screen under which the specimen labors day and night. The desktop background simulates the sky in real time to maintain an artificial relationship with nature, while trees and ground cover plants grow in manicured concrete planters. In the digital realm the specimen expresses itself freely as a genderless cyborg humanoid. When the specimen’s life cycle is about to end its knowledge is uploaded to the collective human consciousness and drained from the body. To mark this occasion a coin is minted and released into the wild. The specimen itself dissolves into the universe, its travels unknown, until the process is started all over again.

The video is installed as a circular image two meters in diameter that is projected downward onto a polished concrete floor.