Video by Jenna Hoffart, 2020. Music by New Order, 1986.

This video is about me on the way to becoming one with my Art, but feeling uncomfortable about it sometimes, especially in the digital world. In the end I have chosen to follow wherever my art wants to take me, and wherever that is must be the right place to go, even if it doesn’t feel comfortable or easy. The video flashes between me wearing the beaded headpiece or the beaded glove to just my face or hand without it, like when I have the tear coming down my face or when the black line comes down my hand. The line on my face is a tear, representing the pain and frustration I have felt through this journey at times, the line on my hand is representing my Art going through my veins and changing me (me becoming my art).

The beaded pieces I made are all about becoming my art as well. The beaded pieces themselves are a wearable Art project I made that is titled “Human Emotion Machine: Wearable Atoms”. Human Emotion Machine is a series of Videos I made which all have a similar meaning as to what was mentioned above. The wearable piece includes the words, "wearable atoms" because the idea behind it is that I am creating my "identity" within a Human Machine powered by Emotion, piece by piece, by making art, because my art is more me than anything else I know. I believe that My Art communicates my heart, soul, and life-energy more than my natural, physical body ever could. The Wearable Atoms represent me becoming my highest and most genuine self, by building my soul piece by piece, through the atoms (beads) of my art.

I use the Plasma Ball in these videos, as for me they represent a mode of travel through many different perceived “realities” in my life. Digital, Physical, Life, Death, and Dreams. For as long as I can remember, my Baba had a Plasma ball on her coffee table. I was obsessed with the thing. There it is in the Physical world. When I was really young, I remember having a dream where I was in a dark, circular room with a Plasma Ball sitting on a table on the other end of a huge pit in the center of the room. I started walking towards the ball, and fell into the pit to my death. There it is in the Dream world. In January of 2020, my Baba passed away. Now the Plasma Ball belongs to me, and sits in my house. It makes me think of her and also of death. There it is in the world of Death. By creating digital art pieces (These videos, as well as still-digital pieces I have created of Plasma Balls) I have now brought the Plasma Ball into the Digital world.

Sometimes it feels challenging to separate these worlds, for me, and that is why I’ve in the past chosen to avoid the Digital world, in order to not add another layer of confusion, as I’ve always had anxieties about whether I’m really in a Dream or in a VR-type simulation, rather than the “real” world, whatever that is. Recently, in the year 2020 and everything it brought us, I’d been forced to spend more time in that Digital realm, and have decided to accept it, and embrace it, as that was the only way for me to continue making my Art while in University. That is what many of my projects made this year are all about.