TRISTAN JALLEH: Imagined Metropolis

Melbourne based video-artist Tristan Jalleh is a man of many names and talents–video artist, music video producer, master designer of virtual realities–he’s come along way from his formal education as an illustrator to explore the experimental world of rotoscopic techniques and virtual environments. In Jalleh’s work, false worlds act as composites of multiple times and new fictional realities to reimagine the everyday and explore attitudes towards the digital. Through a process of combining photographs with hundreds of Google images, Jalleh constructs virtual installations that merge film, animation and video game aesthetic into a neon-lit hyper-reality. After achieving national acclaim through his involvement with Experimenta International Biennial of Media Art and Sydney Contemporary 2015, Jalleh has also gained impressive international recognition, landing himself a nomination for The Berlin Music Video Awards in 2014 for his work with musician Oscar Key Sung. 

A camera pans over exotic plants housed in an elaborate greenhouse. Like something out of a Hitchcock’s Rear Window, we become conscious of our selves as voyeurs. There’s something not quite right about these scenes–on first glance it seems real, but when stared at long enough, the dimensions begin to break down. The distortions are subtle, but it’s enough to evoke the uncanny. It’s like being trapped in a lucid dream, aware that this strange world is not real, but unable to grasp what it is exactly that is wrong. Video artist Tristan Jalleh’s video Android’s Dream presents a false world, a composite of multiple times, a new fictional reality. 

You can read the full interview for Art Kollectiv here