What if the Origin of Species narrative occurred outside of the bounds of the social constructs of a western, patriarchal, European and Victorian/colonialist framework available in 1831? What if Darwin’s primordial soup was a primordial ether, and consciousness was a self-generative digital apparition, defying binary classification? What if evolution is a mode of consciousness and Darwin’s early contributions existed concurrently with parallel, multitudinous inquiries into terrestrial experience across another expression of reality? The V.I.S.T.A.:

Transmutationist Field Journal project was inspired through the artist’s personal orientation to the landscape, legacy and mythology of the American Southwest, Psychodynamic theory, research into Natural Selection and the Darwin narrative; in particular expedition archives, travel logs and subsequent socio-cultural critiques.

Responding to the Paseo Project’s 2023 theme, The Terrestrial, V.I.S.T.A.: Transmutationist Field Journal is a short original film composition, featuring activated digital objects and a three-channel, interactive, narrative soundscape. Multiple simultaneous participants are invited to observe the projected film while wearing multi-channel Bluetooth headsets to become immersed in this visual-spatial-aural experience. Composite audio, photographic and video data has been gathered from the high desert mesa of Arroyo Hondo, New Mexico, in the American Southwest, to create this sensory- saturated experience. Community-sourced vocal samples (resulting from a call into the artist’s community in NM and beyond) from an original script have been manipulated to compose narration accompanying the video field journal itself.

The digital object referenced in this work is part of the artist’s broader cataloging of her digital work over the last three years: Inspired by internal geometries and cellular landscapes, each object is familiar, yet unidentifiable. The V.I.S.T.A.: Transmutationist Field Journal project references themes of natural selection, naturalism, evolution, colonialism, Darwinism and altered human consciousness through the socially-activated collective; a creative, anti-racist and non-binary approach to the Origin of Species narrative.

About the artist: 

Exploring rupture, repair and the climate of internal place, Lauren Dana Smith’s digital and sculptural works represent the linkages between body, land, collective trauma and memory.

Smith’s feminist approach tests the personal boundaries we choose and those we don't. Her paintings and video/sound installations forge inquiries into the impact of personal and collective trauma and transformative experience on the psyche. Each work considers the bodily experience of the land and the mirror it provides to us in times of calm and times of chaos. A viewer may feel that they are simultaneously hovering above the work and suspended inside of it. Smith’s work ultimately invites a path through our intimate interior spaces and along the exterior boundaries of physical form. At play is a steady tension between our inner landscapes and outer environments.

Interested in honoring the depth and narrative of the American Southwest and its parallels to personal and ancestral memory through a contemporary lens, Smith’s work analyzes color, texture, climate and existential presence in a departure from the familiar iconography of traditional Southwestern art.