Ben Thorp Brown
2021
Gropius Memory Palace
Ben Thorp Brown
Daniel Ryan
Through a guided meditation performed by a hypnotherapist, viewers are invited to construct a 'memory palace' as they experience Walter Gropius's iconic Fagus Factory. The film offers an opportunity to soothe anxieties around technology's effects on the body and workplace, and to consider the relationship between memory and architecture.
Gropius Memory Palace
Drowned World
Ben Thorp Brown
Drowned World reflects on the experience of not being able to see the world with depth perception. In the work, two neurologists describe losing and gaining the ability to experience the world in 3D, while their perceptual state is animated by images of optically altered landscapes. Filmed in the high desert of West Texas, the video moves through several carefully managed landscapes of water use and experience: an industrial tomato farm, a water well drilling site, a “natural” spring, a snowstorm, and an artist’s studio.
Drowned World
Cura
Ben Thorp Brown
Jules the Tortoise, Joan La Barbara
The main protagonist of the film is a tortoise; an ancient animal that embodies Cura, the Roman goddess of care, voiced by American vocalist Joan La Barbara. The setting is Richard and Dion Neutra's VDL Research House II in Los Angeles. Architect Neutra carefully designed his projects to elicit human sensory and emotional responses.
Cura
