Nwando Ebizie, Distorted Constellations

Distorted Constellations Vol 2; Visual Snow Alternate Reality is a 360 video environment populated by multiple manifestations of multidisciplinary artist Nwando Ebizie embodying forces of nature through her  signature artistic hybrid of live art, dance, music and Afro-diasporic ritual.

Presented by Forma and The Space, the video expresses a spectrum of Visual  Snow symptoms reimagined as luminous and sonic phenomena.

What is Visual Snow Syndrome?

Visual Snow Syndrome describes the permanent presence of disruptions such as static, trails, auras, starburst, and pointillist dots in a person’s vision, alongside sensory disturbances including tinnitus and ocular migraines.

Currently considered rare, it is a little known neurological condition in the early stages of research by the scientific community. Inextricably linked to subjective perception, Visual Snow’s manifestations offer a fascinating case for how neurodifference can inspire appreciation and understanding of diversity, sensation and unfixed realities.

Engage and Share

Audiences are invited to locate representations of their own perceptions,  engage with new possibilities, and share their experiences across social media.

Produced in collaboration with designers, filmmakers and technical experts, the video is a visualisation tool, a provocation on difference and a transgressive experience encouraging interaction and reflection in both virtual and physical space. Combining fully immersive points of view, spatialized sound reactivity and cutting edge video processing and SFX, each viewing will offer unique possibilities for exploration and engagement by visitors. The video features Nwando’s genre-bending  original song ‘Something Like Empathy’ from her debut album The Swan, an Afrofuturist work of sonic fiction into the imagined world of a matriarchal community, to be released on Matthew Herbert’s Accidental Records early 2022.

Visual Snow filter on Instagram

Accompanying the video release is Forma’s first Instagram filter commission, created in collaboration with artist and AR specialist Cibelle Cavalli Bastos. The Visual Snow filter will allow users to layer their own surroundings with a selection of Visual Snow effects through their phone camera, with images and video easily shared online, promoting awareness of Visual Snow Syndrome. Importantly this filter also signals to the potential of AR filters as a useful tool in the better understanding and diagnoses of Visual Snow Syndrome.

Accessibility

Distorted Constellations Vol 2 is a project rooted in accessibility. Originally conceived as a development of the Distorted Constellations gallery installation that overcomes the physical barriers of place, Nwando has carried this ethos forward into all elements of the work. Working with disability access consultants, she has included 360 aware lyric captions, and created a companion video to provide multifaceted  entry  points including an introduction to Visual Snow Syndrome and audio description of the visual world audiences will encounter.

Afrofuturism

This new iteration of Nwando Ebizie’s Distorted Constellations continues the multidisciplinary artist’s commitment to Afrofuturism and sensory ritual as powerfully subversive practices and a means of connecting with each other and ourselves. The workis transformed for 2021, but retains the enduring belief that transcends all its forms; reality is subjective, perception is fallible and how we experience the world is due to our own specific neurology.