SELF

Mona Foma, Launceston, 2021. Town Hall Underground, Hobart, 2023.

SELF Promotional Image, camera feedback, digital processing, 2020. Photo: Harry Holcombe-James

“Sunday morning I raced across town just in time to be taken offline by Self, a solo immersive experience that wouldn’t be out of place at Mona itself. … Harry Holcombe-James’s trick with Self was needing just 10 minutes to impart the unsettling sensation of meeting yourself as if an other. It was a weirdly touching, melancholic feeling that stayed long after I put my shoes back on at the top of the stairs on the way out. I won’t spoil it beyond saying it consists of a short film, music, a lie down and flashing lights…” 

(Mona Foma Didn’t Just Go Ahead, It Proved a Locals-Only Line-Up Could Be Sublime – Broadsheet.com)

Self is an experience that takes the viewer into new found perspectives of their being. Presented with a reflective image of themselves, experiencers are taken on a journey of technologically mediated meditation, producing mind-altering context for self-reflection.

Users will traverse a passageway in pursuit of an emitting light. As they approach, the sound, light and physical properties increase in intensity. Light creeps around corners, sounds increase in pressure, the walls angle in on each other and require maneuvering to progress. The process of approaching the center of Self is a building of intensity. Entering the experience, users are not aware that they will be confronted with a reflective image. The approach is designed to increase the viewers sense of significance.

The approach to the reflection removes the outside world from awareness. Through entering the work, the viewer is disconnected from the rest of the world and forced to confront their own reflection. Through receipt of dispersed visual information, the viewer is presented with a dynamic composition of light, sound, colour and reflection. Although the piece is centered on the visual, the aural is strategically deployed to create a layer of emotional context.

The underlying phenomenon of Self is known as the Troxler Effect. When we are presented with partial visual information, we are reliant on supplementary information generated by our brain to fill in the gaps. Experiences of having two individuals stare at each other in low light for 10 minutes has shown to have effects of “dissociative symptoms, dysmorphic face perceptions, and hallucination-like strange-face apparitions”. SELF narrows in on the individual. You are alone with the image of your “self”, perceived in a heightened environment revealing what you really think.

This project was assisted through Arts Tasmania by the Minister for the Arts.

Created and produced By Harry Holcombe-James
Sound by Jack McLaine
Construction and design by Jackson Wells
Technology by Joe Robinson

During a special invite only presentation in 2023, the SELF experienced was documented and represented in the following bodies of work titled COLOUR, Internal Representation and SEEN, NOT SEEN.