Metaphorically representing chaos and order in the mind

Abstract

This study adopts a multidisciplinary approach that combines digital arts, science, philosophy, and personal meditative practices to assist contemporary artistic creation. The research takes an ontological, phenomenological, and practice-led approach to question, understand and communicate an honest, temporal experience of being-in-my-mind as a reflection on ‘being-in-the-world’. A substantial part of the research draws from cognitive neuroscience and how the brain’s inner workings create our subjective realities and experience of consciousness; our mental states, emotions, behaviours, and memories. An exploration guides the research into understanding reality as a self-conscious being aware of being aware. It delves into the metaphysics of reality and the dialectics of time, space, and place. The resultant artistic work, informed by the research, is an ambiguous self-portrait that places the author’s physical, temporal, embodied presence in the centre experiencing a flow of consciousness; a surreal cascade of imagery, firsthand experiences, variable associations and memories. The edited clips, effects and tempo were modified in post production informed by neuron bundle theories such as Gestalt theories and Meme Theory.