A World Observing a World

‹A World Observing a World› is a fictional documentary that imagines a probe sent from one extraterrestrial planet to explore another.

I wanted to take the meeting of “self” and “other” out of ordinary social interaction and raise it to a collision between two planets running on entirely different physical laws. Through the neutral gaze of an exploratory robot, the misunderstandings that arise between people become acts of observation and investigation — a way of turning what is personal into something that resonates collectively.

I made this with the media artist Hyeseon Han. We brought together imagined organisms from Planet A and exploratory robots from Planet B, built out of speculative readings of A’s lifeforms, and set them in micro-scale sound environments — so the audience meets the “other” either through the probe’s eyes or from outside it.

The slow visuals, the ambient atmospheres and the tactile sound are all there to open up how much can be perceived.

Every person is an independent world, one that can never be fully understood by anyone else. I imagined each of us as a separate planet, unknowable from outside, and documented the moment two of those worlds meet as a neutral exploratory documentary.