Topographia Nervosa

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Digital video, corrupted and layered NES games, 1:54

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2020

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Topographia Nervosa is a two-channel video installation that considers the relationship among natural landscapes and the inner operations of computers. Here, Nintendo games have been corrupted and meticulously arranged in mask layers. The layers are played in continual loops of glitch patterns. More so, a virtual camera hovers, and slowly zooms in upon both channels to reveal the strange ontologies of pixels, titles, and color palletes that underlie the familiar interfaces of 8-bit games. Within the gallery, two different landscapes are played adjacent to each other, with each meeting at a corner. These two projections will cover the entirety of the walls and play continuously in loops. As the glitch patterns within these “nervous landscapes” pulsate and move they draw a relation to natural topographies witnessed from aerial views or in satellite imagery. Through the complexities of layers and continually unfolding glitch sequences, Topographia Nervosa imagines the forensic processes of video games as a kind of computational landscape, unveiling the vibrant, yet unfamiliar energies that exist below the surface of the gameworlds.

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Exhibited at:

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$5 Video National Juried Exhibition, Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts, Lubbock, TX, June-August 2020.

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On the Surface: A National Juried Exhibition,

Attleboro Arts Museum, Attleboro, MA, June-July 2020.