DevHarlanOnManifold: Five Body Problems #1: A speculative rare earth mineral recovery model and the poetics of head bashing the steering wheel #2/3

3840x2160, 24FPS MP4 (Video link in metadata)

In the digital short film Five Body Problems #1, I use photogrammetry and 3D animation to explore themes of landscape, technology and anthropogenic change. The work features digital scans of rocks, boulders and natural sites found in diverse parts of the world. Susan Sontag wrote that a photograph “is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real, like a footprint or a death mask.” In this way traces of the real are also evident in 3D scans. I make photogrammetry to share those traces and to trace my path through the landscape.

The work is part of a series which takes its name from the class of mathematical problems involving orbiting bodies. Five body problems are difficult to solve as they are very sensitive to initial conditions and often have unstable solutions. I depict technological decay and disruption as it is not clear if a stable solution exists for human technological societies and the Earth system. Humans can no longer entertain the narrative that their societies and technology are somehow separate from the natural world. They are all entangled and embedded within each other.