Abstract

My thesis explores how we encounter beauty and find meaning in contemporary life through some kind of visual video experience. 3D animation is used to create intimate scenes in ‘space’ where elements - whether objects, light, or form - are somehow rendered strange, dreamlike, or sacred. These scenes incorporate magical realism, light, colors, surrealism, or camera work, to invite a shift in perception, asking viewers to see the everyday through a lens of wonder. This project is grounded in Buddhist philosophy and contemplative awareness, Romantic aesthetics and the sublime, neuroaesthetics and the cognitive science of beauty, theories of enchantment and meaning-making, and contemporary practices in digital art and magical realism. Ultimately it investigates how beauty itself is a fundamental mode of meaning and a core part of the human experience, and how we can access it through a focused, present attention to simple things.

Concept

My idea begins with a conviction that beauty is a central aspect of the human experience, intrinsic in how we make meaning and understand our place in the world. In an age that could be characterized by its disenchantment, can we still access genuine experiences of the sublime? Could it exist not in vast landscapes, but rather in intimate, carefully observed moments, where heightened awareness can reveal the extraordinary in the everyday?

Some of the primary questions I would like to explore are: How can we access and experience wonder, beauty, and meaning in a seemingly disenchanted world? Can wonder exist on an intimate scale, rather than a grand one, and how do we find transcendence in the everyday? Can focused, contemplative awareness reveal the mystical in the ordinary? What happens when we attend fully to simple things? What role does beauty play in how we make meaning? Is beauty a universal human need, and if so, what does that mean for how we live?

I believe this is an unique angle because it synthesizes multiple frameworks (digital, neuroscientific, historical, spiritual) to create a visual language for experiencing beauty and meaning – the Romantic emphasis on emotion and the sublime, cognitive science’s understanding of how aesthetics and attention shape consciousness, Eastern practices of focused contemplative attention, and the digital tools that can allow for dreamlike spatial exploration. I hope my original perspective comes from being both critically engaged with questions of meaning-making and disenchantment while treating aesthetics and beauty with sincerity and commitment, ultimately using modern digital tools to pursue timeless questions about what moves us and why.

Research

This project is closely tied to my own relationship to beauty and aesthetic experience as a driving force as well as my journey towards finding meaning in a world that often feels cold or disenchanted. I’ve always felt pulled towards beauty as a form of knowledge and a reason to create, and one of the main areas I want to research is the concept of ‘neuroaesthetics,’ exploring how aesthetic pleasure influences the brain and what that might mean when it comes to how we inject meaning into our lives. This direction continues on from my undergraduate education where I studied cognitive science and neuroscience; I’ve long been fascinated with memory, perception, and how focused attention can shape consciousness and meaning-making at the most basic level.

The concept of attention being linked to meaning is also particularly interesting to me because of the links between different modes of religion and spirituality, their evolution, and their place in the modern world. I would like to continue researching how the “old world”’s relationship to spiritual enchantment evolved into one more machinistic and mechanized with the loss of ecological landscapes and community-based connection, and contrast that with Eastern religion’s focus on increased awareness and mindful presence, engaging the inner, imaginative self, and how this could be the ultimate form of meaning. I posit that this ancient practice of deep seeing, of being truly present with what’s before us, can become a pathway to wonder.

I also want to utilize frameworks of phenomenology and philosophical anthropology to investigate the age-old question of what it means to be human. Why are we drawn to things like nature, the moon, mountains, water, light? What do these core human themes mean to us – nostalgia, identity, hope, connection, dream? How do we connect to one another, to the world around us, to ideas that feel larger than ourselves, and make sense of our lives?

Audience

I think we all carry a latent capacity for wonder and a hunger for beauty, even if contemporary life makes it hard to access. I definitely don’t want my project to be aimed at a specialized art audience or those already versed in contemplative practice; it’s for people moving through their daily lives who might stumble into one of these scenes and find themselves paying attention differently, even briefly. I also don’t want to provide excessive explanations or encourage much discourse around the work—there would be no interaction involved, no narrative to follow, no concept to analyze or grasp intellectually. My goal is that viewers might leave the experience looking at their own lives slightly differently, even in a tiny way, more attuned to the possibility of the ordinary becoming special or alive in a new way.