Nico Chilla
My Heart in Four Dimensions
Prompt: "As humans, we leave traces of ourselves, our bodies, our being, in nearly everything that we do, make, design, destroy. Choose such a trace and locate other instances/moments where this trace might exist (or consider creating ‘traces’ of your own)."
In this piece I was interested in tracking the continuity of my mental experience across different physical spaces as I walk through the city. To do this I placed and photographed 15 poster installations across the East Village, which then transform into a looping animation when played in rapid succession.
By embedding the posters in pictures of their environments, the video shows how my presence leaves small traces in the minds of those who witnessed me and in the physical landscape. These traces feel ironically inconsequential compared to the magnitude of my individual mental experience. In theory the posters are also in themselves physical traces of me (if I could leave them anywhere without getting into trouble).