Being Together
“...even before the pandemic hit, we humans spent about 90% of our time indoor on average — however we think of ourselves, people are fact largely an indoor species.”
(99% Invisible 2020)
As an international student, spending time with families at home in my own country can only happen during a long vacation. The last time I had face-to-face conversations with my families was before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Restrained by physical distance, my daily communication with families must stay online. The following exploration in this chapter is an experimental practice under the remote mode of conversation.
My conversation with my parents usually starts after my dinner and before theirs, and we usually choose to meet with each other at home, sometimes in other places; while talking, we sometimes are working on other things simultaneously.
The following exploration in this chapter is an experimental practice of reengaging to people and space. By discarding the restraint of screen of phone and laptop and releasing the scene of video call to any surface in domestic space, I try to create an illusional visual effect to perceptively shorten the distance between me and my families, and to test another possibility of the form of conversation.
In the series of site-based practices, I projected the scenes that my families and I had video phone calls on my current living space, some of the videos are pre-recorded, some are live. While having phone calls, they were walking dogs, watching TV, or having a walk in the park. We had conversations and had dinner together at different homes. Through their lenses, I was enabled to return home; and by projecting the scenes on the wall, ground, lawn or other surfaces, I was enabled to bring part of the space to where I was.
The diagrams indicate the spatial layouts of camera, projector, projected videos and the context space, and shows how projected space was distorted and layered upon the physical environment.