Post-Hyperreal Volcano

# Post-Hyperreal Volcano ### Economy and Instability Between Presence and Autonomous Realities **Post-Hyperreal Volcano** is a real-time audiovisual system in which multiple autonomous realities coexist without becoming a unified world. The work consists of three independent systems: an artificial-life system based on fear and faith, a volcanic visual system based on the collapse of UV-mapped images, and an autonomous sound system generated through spectral transformation and noise. Although all three systems are affected by the presence of the viewer, they maintain their own internal logic and temporality. They are connected by a shared condition, but never fully synchronize. The viewer does not interact with the work through conventional gestures or controls. Instead, their mere presence becomes an external force. A depth camera detects the volume occupied by the viewer and their proximity to the sensor, translating this information into a scalar field called **presence pressure**. This pressure affects each system differently. ### Artificial Life — Fear / Faith The first system consists of non-representational particles circulating around an invisible center. Their behavior is governed by two opposing forces: **fear**, which produces repulsion and dispersion, and **faith**, which produces attraction and convergence. Under presence pressure, fear does not simply increase. It **oscillates**, continuously rising and falling according to the viewer's changing position and proximity. This instability prevents faith from accumulating. Faith requires temporal continuity in order for convergence to emerge, but the oscillation of fear repeatedly interrupts that continuity. As a result, equilibrium remains structurally possible within the system, but cannot become fully experienced. **Harmony is not absent; it is perpetually deferred by instability.** ### Volcanic Reality — UV Collapse The second system uses a live volcanic video stream in two simultaneous forms: as an environmental skybox and as textures mapped onto rotating 3D objects. The same source image therefore exists within different spatial realities. As the objects rotate and deform, the image becomes fragmented and spatially distorted. Under presence pressure, the UV mappings progressively lose coherence, causing the same volcanic reality to diverge into incompatible versions of itself. There is no clear hierarchy between background and foreground, source and representation, or original and copy. The work does not ask which image is the “real” volcano. Instead, it exposes how a single source can generate multiple realities that cannot be completely reconciled. ### Autonomous Sound The third system operates independently from the visual and particle systems. Volcanic source material is analyzed through **FFT (Fast Fourier Transform)**, transformed and reconstructed through **iFFT**, and combined with non-correlated noise processes. As presence pressure increases, additional noise layers emerge and spectral structures become increasingly unstable. Sound does not function as a soundtrack to the image. There is no predetermined synchronization between the sound, the volcanic imagery, and the particles. It forms another autonomous reality: related to the same source, yet governed by its own processes. ### Presence as Pressure The viewer is therefore both observer and disturbance. Their body does not control the work in a conventional sense. Instead, simply being present changes the conditions under which the systems exist. Presence simultaneously produces: - oscillatory instability in the relationship between fear and faith - visual deformation and UV collapse - sonic contamination and spectral instability The paradox is that **greater presence does not produce greater access**. The viewer activates the work, but this activation makes its realities increasingly unstable and inaccessible to one another. Participation becomes a form of intervention without mastery. ### Multiple Realities **Post-Hyperreal Volcano** rejects the idea of a single, unified, or superior reality. The volcanic image exists simultaneously as environment and texture. The particle system follows behavioral rules independent from the image. The sound system transforms related material without synchronizing with either. What is seen, heard, and experienced therefore cannot be reduced to one coherent audiovisual reality. The work instead proposes several autonomous realities that coexist under shared conditions, interfere indirectly, and diverge without final synthesis. The “post-hyperreal” condition is not an attempt to create a more convincing simulation of reality. It is an exploration of what happens when reality itself is understood as multiple, unstable, and only partially accessible. ### Exhibition as Temporary Realization The work is dependent on real-time processes, sensing, computation, external conditions, and the physical presence of viewers. It is therefore not a fixed audiovisual composition that produces an identical state each time it is exhibited. Each exhibition is a temporary realization of the system. Changes in the number, position, and proximity of viewers alter the presence pressure and consequently the behavior of the three autonomous systems. There is no definitive state of the work. Each encounter produces a different configuration between presence, instability, and reality. **Post-Hyperreal Volcano** is therefore not a representation of reality, but a real-time condition in which autonomous realities continuously coexist and diverge. The viewer is not outside the system looking in. **To see is to alter. To be present is to introduce pressure.** And the more fully the viewer enters the work, the more the realities within it become inaccessible to one another.