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PO1 : Final Installation

 


Black River

Media Installation

Audio & Video Sculpture



Black River is a media installation exploring displacement and the longing for a deep connection towards a kind of homeland. At its center is an Inflatable Crocodile—a puppet trapped in an unending karaoke performance, forever singing a song about its life. Though it has no voice, its presence suggests an eternal loop of longing, echoing unheard stories of loss.


The work humanizes this fictional creature, evoking empathy and prompting reflection on our own connections to land. It investigates shifting ecological baselines—the way in which each living generation perceives nature’s decline as their “normal.” As ecosystems collapse, what we consider natural keeps shifting, obscuring what we’ve lost. Within this narrative, the crocodile longs for its polluted homeland and to be with other mutated crocodiles. Dwelling in a post-climate apocalypse where remnants of human industries remain and pollution becoming our final legacy.





This media installation incorporates the sculpture I made for the Bespoke Object Project, to create a mascot/puppet sculpture to drive the emotional aspect the work.









For the animated karaoke component I used the same model and rigged it in blender and animated using QuillVR. The song involved in this narrative was another layer of complexity, I personally have never written a song and this project was a great start to get there. I started by creating a prose about my life and took key points and used it to make the phrases on the song. My friend Julie Olive was kind enough to collaborate with me on this project and provided the vocals and composed the guitar melody for this song. Overall I was really trying to work in the satirical aspect of this song but I also wanted to the viewer to empathize. Julie's folk rendition of this song was just the icing on the cake. 












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