Somnium (Transmission I)

FESCH.TV INFORMIERT:

Named for Johannes Kepler’s Somnium (The Dream) (c.1634), widely considered the first work of science fiction, in which Kepler imagines a trip to the moon, Rollins’ work Somnium (Transmission I) utilizes archival recordings from family videos and voice memos captured throughout their daily life to imagine a conversation between the artist and their father on the moon– or perhaps at the edge of the event horizon. The piece explores the sharing of aspirations between a father and daughter: longing for a sense of self-purpose, a citizen-scientist’s love of all things space-travel, a fascination with documentary filmmaking and video, ambitions for a career in the arts, and desire for connection with the universe. Somnium (Transmission I) posits that some dreams are passed on and inherited like DNA. It embodies the transmission of a promise from one generation to the next: if I don’t get to go to the moon someday, then I’ll make sure you will.

Materials photogrammed for animations:
Ingredients for lunar highlands regolith simulant (anorthosite, glass-rich basalt, Ilmenite, pyroxene, olivine (mineral life is believed to have evolved from)), Cherenkov radiation (from the RINSC nuclear reactor), quartz (key to development of the phonograph due to piezoelectric properties), honeycomb, female eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly, flowers from grandparents‘ house in TN, rhesus monkey skull (first primate in space, first primate to die in space travel), tomato, waveforms generated from 100 nights of the artist sleeping as recorded with the “Sleep Cycle” App.

Audio: audio/video recordings of the artist and their father spanning 25 years, static generated from 100 nights of the artist sleeping as recorded with the “Sleep Cycle” App linked together into one long waveform and then coded into sound using GNU Octave, shepard scales made from recordings of the artist dancing with their father at their wedding, sampling from NPR Radio Lab episodes, recordings of static and silence from the space shuttle Challenger disaster, stopwatch ticking, synth music, audio from the „image side“ of the Golden Record sent out on Voyager Probes 1 and 2 into interstellar space.

Installation Materials: High gloss acrylic dishes from airplane manufacturer, metal armatures fabricated by the artist and built in Nashville, TN by family company, fog, LED flashlights, light.

Flashlights create mirascope illusions on the dishes of the constellations Lyra and Cassiopeia.

Generation