Gallery: A Puzzling Projection Simulates What It’s Like to Live With Dementia
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“Losing Myself,” is an installation in the Irish pavilion at this year’s Venice Architectural Bienalle.
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In it, videos project onto the floor of a pitch-dark room into a rectangle of light. The 16 films, each just 16 minutes long, all begin with hand-drawn architectural blueprints. But as the minutes unspool, the projections bloom into colorful, complex patterns.
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It’s meant to be a visual metaphor for the way people with neurodegenerative diseases experience the built environment. As a disorder like Alzheimer’s disease progresses, familiar places can grow increasingly foreign and confusing.
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The drawings come from 16 architects, who were invited to draft blueprints of the Alzheimer’s Respite Center on tracing paper atop a glass-topped desk, while they filmed the sketches from beneath.
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Sixteen Panasonic projectors atop 16 brass quadpods allow the drawings to play out as animations, in 16-minute loops.
