Topia is an immersive installation exploring digital screen culture in contemporary society through a historic lens. The work attempts to create an embodied experience of new definitions for the modern screen, drawing from historical media traditions. Topia builds on film scholar Francesco Casetti’s work on screens, who argues in his book ‘Screen Genealogies. From Optical Device to Environmental Medium’ that before its cinematic function, a ‘screen’ had a spatial role: “For most of its history, a screen was a filter, a divide, a shelter, or a camouflage.” Topia is a spatial experience that brings this underexposed history to the forefront.

The installation invites the spectator into a ‘screenscape’, in which both its display and its architectural functions are referenced and performed. Light ‘screen’, a large light projection surface on haze in space, creates a perceptual wall. This new screen becomes an immaterial interface that is created through digital technologies but manifest in the physical environment. The large light wall emphasize the flatness of the ‘screen’ whilst the light blue colour references today’s omnipresence of LED screens. By bringing a historical understanding of screens (architecture) and their dominant contemporary narrative (display), Topia questions what a screen is and can be.

collaborators

Zalán Szakács, concept, research, light composition
Pandelis Diamantides, sound design, music composition
Boris Acket, light programming
Bob Roijen/Raito, production designer
Colin Schram, production assistant
Fanni Hegyi, production assistant