Q&A with Linda Loh
A conversation with filmmaker Linda Loh on her short film, Beyond Agog.
How did you first get into filmmaking?
My filmmaking inhabits the realm of video art, and I first started exploring this in 2011, when I was studying painting and video at art school, in Melbourne Australia. I had my first video exhibition that year, where I filled the long gallery space with elongated projections of animated digitally abstracted paintings; my first immersive experience of being inside my own slow-moving dramatic images.
What was your creative process for this film?
It’s almost as if this film is a sequel to that first exhibition of projections, in that my second “wow” experience of scaling my work up for immersion was in 2021 when I learned to make a world in virtual reality. Once again, this was connected to art school, only this time it was my MFA, in NYC, and the VR world “Agog” was my thesis project. “Agog” is an abstract, speculative world to explore, with luminous and color-saturated structures towering above, and strange forms and “non-forms” around. The visitor is surrounded by a specially made experimental soundscape.
“Agog” is built in the 3d gaming software “Unreal Engine” and cameras can be set up in various places within the 3d world. This film, “Beyond Agog” is therefore filmed “on location” in “Agog”. There is also a downloadable desktop experience of “Agog”, and the beginning and end of “Beyond Agog” has been captured from some of the places there, where the viewer is immersed in light. I wanted “Beyond Agog” to be its own journey through these spaces, a stand-alone experience, where everything is a little weird and it’s unclear where you are going, looping into the light forever.
What projects are you working on next, and how can people who are interested best support or follow you.
I do have some 3D video projects underway, and am looking forward to retreating to some studio time to research their development.
However, my artistic time is currently consumed by dipping my toe into the world of NFTs in late 2021. I minted my video “Beyond Agog” along with twenty small 3d sculptures from “Agog”, and by default “Beyond Agog”. They are all on the on the artist-focused platform Teia (which was Hic et Nunc), (and Objkt), which are part of the environmentally friendly blockchain Tezos (#cleanNFT).
So, I am spending a lot of time down internet rabbit holes researching and exploring the potential for my work in this fast-moving space, amidst the distracting clamor of non-art crypto people.
If you would like to see these NFTs all together (and even collect some, if you have some Tezos… of course, ignore if all this is gobbledegook!).
I’m active on Instagram (mainly for art) and Twitter (mainly for NFTs) with the same handle for both @__lindaloh__ (double underscores at each end).
