Border as interface (2024)

‘Border as Interface’ is a moving image artwork exploring zones of momentary overlap between seemingly opposing elements. The "interface" concept here is fluid and multifaceted; an interface, whether in software, digital screens, or one’s language or body, is a site of entanglement and movement. How the interface manifests and the supposed borders it enacts are recalibrated with every connection that is made. It’s a place of transience with its own set of rules and oscillating perspectives that only make sense within the shifting internal logic of the borderlands.

​The work explores how these dynamic zones can reshape entrenched perspectives. It questions "where images end and bodies begin, where truth or the real might reside,"[1] and where the boundary between spectator and screen dissolves into “life.” Such interfaces function as special conduits to the virtual, positioning the body as a node of mediation in our techno-political landscape. They also reveal what is created or lost in cross-cultural interactions; miscalculations, strange pairings and redundancy live within the hybridity zones of Border and Interface. 

Through this lens, ‘Border as Interface’ examines how subjects navigate the vast unknowns of these encounters, adapting to an unfathomable otherness, whether it be a virtual environment or a large body of water. With imagery drawn from real footage, hand-drawn animations, video games, software screen recordings, and 3D scans, the work reconfigures supposed boundaries, unfolding the processes of interfacing across dimensions.

[1] From Deborah Levitt’s ‘The Animatic Apparatus’.

Running time: 18:49 min
subtitled in ENGLISH (Japanese subtitles in progress・日本語字幕制作中）
watch below ​↓ with ENG subtitles (click CC button to toggle on/off)