Chrysalis

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glitch animation

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2024

 

Chrysalis is a glitch-based film that explores the possibilities for experience beyond the human through concepts of transmigration; rather, the soul or anima passing on to another form after the flesh deteriorates. In this glitchy narrative created using performance, data corruption, and artificial intelligence engines, the artist is thrust into a phantasmagoric vision. He climbs a tall tree in hopes of turning himself into a chrysalis and emerging as a butterfly. Passing through a strange Bardo state of demons and demigods, Lohmeyer surrenders to the processual unfolding of things, letting go of self and taking a plunge to the forest floor. Instead of searching for progress, an outcome, or transformation into a butterfly, the artist sees his true nature: that there is no separation between things. In its themes of impermanence, surrender, and shared ontologies among the human and nonhuman, Chrysalis explores an ethics for artificial intelligence in new media art as a technology of everyday magic and spiritual introspection, imagining spiritual realms as states of the mind through speculative, immersive worldbuilding.