PHOSPHENES

Through the gaze of the dashcam Phosphenes explores immanent apocalyptic angst within the complexities of visual representation. In utilizing the lens of technology while employing a narrative structure suggestive of a hero’s mythic journey, this film immediately asks its viewer to identify with both the camera and the imagined driver, complicating agency, perspective and the act of bearing witness. The viewer becomes both human protagonist and tool of surveillance, simultaneously active and passive, self-aware and self-alienated.

By borrowing the narrative pattern of a hero’s journey the film lends its viewer a stand-in for the self, simulating an immersive firsthand experience that denies self-determination yet mimics it, thereby acknowledging the camera’s power to both heighten and numb our sense of reality, even as we head towards our own destruction and impending demise.