Trystan Nord, a senior emerging media arts student from Gretna, Nebraska, traveled to London in June for the opening of “Can You See How I See?,” a graduate thesis project for Central St. Martens student Yoni Chepisheva. Nord served as technical artist for the project.
“Can You See How I See?” is an experimental multimedia experience that looks to spread awareness of the medical condition called Palinopsia, with which Chepisheva has been diagnosed. Palinopsia is a pathological group of visual symptoms in which there is an abnormal persistence or reoccurrence of an image in time when performing sudden movements or experiencing changes in the environment.
“Basically you see a bad blur effect whenever you move your head too quickly,” Nord said. “And the colors on all of these transparent before blurred images are reversed. I believe blue becomes pink, and green becomes purple. It changes the way she sees the world.”
Chepisheva researched her symptoms as a teenager.
“I noticed that every time I said something to friends and said look at the shape of this or look at the afterimage that you have, or look at how your face turns from white to blue or from black to green, people would say I don’t know what you’re saying. I don’t see this,” she said. “I gradually lost friends because people distanced themselves. I ended up marginalizing myself in my own one-person community, and I never understood why people don’t see that way.”
She later found a neuro-ophthalmologist who diagnosed her with Palinopsia. Her project aims to bring the struggles of Palinopsia to everyone through a mixed-reality experience. It was on display at Central St. Martens from June 13-20. It has also been accepted to the Florence Biennial, an art exhibition held in Florence, Italy, in October.
Nord and Chepisheva met last summer when he traveled to London for the study abroad course “Story Abroad: Future Fictions, London, U.K.,” led by Assistant Professor of Emerging Media Arts Ash Eliza Smith and Megan Elliott, the Johnny Carson Endowed Director in Emerging Media Arts.
“Trystan and Yoni met and collaborated during our Story Abroad trip last summer in London where Stephanie Sherman and I were able to sync the Central Saint Martens’ Narrative Environments program with our UNL cohort,” Smith said. “We had multiple lectures, workshops and social gatherings with the students from CSM and UNL and opportunities to collaborate on a final project. Students expanded not only their international networks, but also their knowledge and experience with emerging media arts on the global stage. I cannot emphasize enough the value of these faculty-led programs, nor the support from the Carson Foundation, Hixson-Lied Endowment and Global Experiences to make this happen.”
The UNL students met with students from Central Saint Martens’ Narrative Environments program and had the chance to get to know each other’s interests.
“I started talking with Yoni because the project her group did was pretty interesting to me. And I talked about my interest in medical extended reality. And that’s when Yoni told me that she has this condition called Palinopsia. I said that’s such an interesting thing. I have worked in AR before, I wonder how you would do that as an augmented reality experience. And she said, for my capstone, I want to do something like that.”
They talked further about such a project and discussed what the parameters would be.
“And we really thought that this could work, and we could do this in a really fantastic way, and it kind of took off from there from just the idea to an actual project and now a full-blown installation,” Nord said.
Nord thought augmented reality would fit this project.
“I knew that kind of augmentation that augmented reality brings could be perfect for something like this and what Yoni was describing,” he said. “Being able to bring that and not only this is what Palinopsia looks like in a very separate experience that is removed from the body, but personally putting you in, giving you that condition and being able to fully immerse yourself into somebody who has this condition was a very interesting challenge.”
Nord has appreciated the experience he’s gained from working on such a project.
“I’ve gained so much experience,” he said. “Personally, just working with Yoni, of course, and learning about the condition of Palinopsia has been interesting in its own right and experiencing that. But also, I was able to gather a lot and learn about how to do an installation on such a grand scale.”
Nord also hopes to bring his experience with the project back to the Carson Center sometime next fall.
“I love the EMA Center and how artists are allowed to show their work,” he said. “One thing I want to do next semester is either give an IGNITE talk to do a presentation showing what I’ve worked with Yoni on and show the students that these opportunities are out there. One of the reasons I’m so excited that Professor Ash Smith is bringing the Carson students that are going to London this summer to the opening of this experience is because I want to show people that even though we are in Nebraska, that doesn’t mean you don’t have opportunities. You have opportunities all around you. I had to go to London to find mine, but I got that opportunity through this school. As long as you put yourself out there for experiences and are willing to step out of your comfort zone, it’s out there. You can do it.”
Nord sees the potential for the technology.
“I think for me the power behind this project really relies on where this deeply emotional experience and community is meeting the ability to bring that to the masses, and the ability to utilize this technology to not only create this cool optical effect for people, but to get them to think about it and see in a different way. It’s to get them to understand the emotions behind living day in and day out with this condition. That is where the power and excitement comes from. And I think other people are starting to recognize its ability to really have a true impact on people. There’s so much potential for this, and I’m so excited to be on the ground floor.”