In the digital short film Five Body Problems #2 - Lost And Found In The Wash, I use photogrammetry and 3D animation to explore themes of landscape, technology and anthropogenic change. The digital landscapes were recorded while exploring a derelict mining site in the Mojave desert. The animation references my activity at the site, which included producing a large relief mold of an exposed rock wall. The process, artifacts and technology are intermingled within the work as they are subconsciously in my memory. By juxtaposing physical places with the mundane and the fantastic, the animation moves fluidly between the real, the hyperreal and the imagined.
The work is part of a series which takes its name from the class of mathematical problems governing orbiting bodies. Five body problems are difficult to solve as they are very sensitive to initial conditions and often have unstable solutions. I depict technological decay and disruption as it is not clear if a stable solution exists for human technological societies and the Earth system. Humans can no longer entertain the narrative that their societies and technology are somehow separate from the natural world. We must awaken to the way that they are all entangled and embedded within each other.