This project explores the potential of the art encounter and how it can connect the viewer to interior feelings and imaginative associations to form a visceral, psychologically compelling experience. It experiments with a multi-sensory approach using photography, moving image and installation to investigate seeing as experience rather than solely observation. The investigation draws on work made from the artist’s immersive encounters with bodies of water. This research is theoretically framed via the ideas of Deleuze and Guattari in particular their notions of ‘becoming’, ‘smooth space’ and ‘affects’. Its central question asks if and how an imaginative transformation occurs as a result of an art encounter so as to lose the self – even for a moment – to open up new possibilities around a potential heightened awareness of the fluidity of life.
