ENMESHED
ENMESHED is a video render of a digital sculpture depicting the ecstasy of non-binary gender euphoria achieved through intimacy. The sculpture is composed of 3D LiDAR scans of plants, composited with a scan of the artist’s body. Because LiDAR is a low-fidelity form of 3D scanning, the scan results vary in legibility, producing emergent characteristics. The scans are further distorted when they are inflated and compressed in a 3D editing software; then complied together to form the sculpture. Contrasting digital materials and textures are applied to the scans within the composition, creating visible seams where different scans intersect. The video is accompanied with music composed by AI and edited in a Digital Audio Workstation.
ENMESHED is an exploration of the shared liminal characteristics between emergent digital art practices, and gender queer identity. 3D scanned biological forms are rendered as readable data – akin to the process of being identified as male or female by binary gender makers at birth. LiDAR fails to scan the forms completely – the emergent imperfections parallel the unknowability of gender identities that fall outside the binary. The scans are inflated in an editing software; the resulting forms end up completely unrecognizable from their original scans, while still maintaining integral structural limits. This process of pinching and squeezing is often what it feels like to make oneself legible as a non-binary person in a binary-gendered world. Contrasting materials are applied to the forms, making it apparent where shapes connect. Non-binary identities contain multitudes, and these plural ways of being can create “seams” that are visible to binary culture – an androgynous person in a public bathroom, is such a “seam.”
The distorted forms resulting from the 3D scans are compressed into a shared physical space – overlapping and intersecting into an intertwined knot – reflecting a process of integration. The resulting sculpture alludes to the connection between positive sexual experiences and the integration of the artist’s non-binary identity. Sex within a gender binary has implicit value and shame embedded within it. Sex for women is historically constructed as an inherent loss, while sex for men is historically constructed as an inherent gain. Sex as a non-binary person allows for realities where the body is plural in form – realities where shared traumas and shared desires enmesh and become something new. Compressing multiple, distorted forms into one shared space parallels the process of gender euphoria – successfully becoming legible to oneself.
Documentation
