Jake Wells, a professional tattooist, DIY drone builder, FPV (First Person View) flight hobbyist, and possibly the world’s first RC (Remote Control) Christian Minister, shares some of his stories and ideas regarding the connection between religion, drone technology and his personal struggles. While flying, crashing and repairing his homemade drone in the area around his home in the Olympic Peninsula on the northwest tip of the USA, he recounts the story of his techno-spiritual awakening, from a life in which he felt remotely controlled by other forces, to his current state, in control, preaching and flying. Footage of Wells observing himself from the drone’s point of view using FPV gear, and shots reminiscent of romantic landscape paintings depicting the wider wilderness setting in which he resides, are woven together with monologues based on Wells’ own brand of theology, concerned with the connection between FPV flight, out of body experiences and the nature of the soul.
Lessons on Leaving Your Body
Nadav Assor
2014 00:14:40 United StatesEnglishColorStereo16:9HD videoDescription
About Nadav Assor
Nadav Assor employs a range of expanded media practices to explore the unstable condition of the hyper-mediated body, the “new flesh”, constantly transformed by technology, in its immediate social, political, sensory, and emotional environment. This is often done via lo-fi reenactments of appropriated military-industrial technologies, examining technological mediation as an essential and transformative human condition.
For more than 10 years, Assor has performed and exhibited internationally in festivals, music venues, museums and galleries in North America, Israel, Europe and Asia. Some recent venues for his work include Hong-Gah Museum (Taipei), Centre Arts Santa Monica (Barcelona), Hyphen Hub (NYC), Edith-Russ-Haus (Oldenburg), Transmediale Festival (Berlin), the European Media Arts Festival, the Soundwave Biennial (San Francisco), Residency Unlimited (NYC), Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago), the Koffler Center (Toronto), Julie M Gallery (Tel Aviv), Xuzhou Museum (China), and many others. Assor’s work was reviewed in publications such as Artforum, Vice Motherboard, Art Monthly UK, Haaretz, Time Out, the Creators Project and more. He holds an MFA in Art & Technology from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2010, full merit fellow), where he was the inaugural recipient of the Edes Award, one of the graduate schools highest honors. He is a recipient of multiple grants and awards in the U.S. and Israel, and currently serves as an Assistant Professor and an Associate Director of the Center for Arts & Technology at Connecticut College in the U.S.