Phillip Shen
The King's School
SCARS REMAIN
Time-Based Forms
Digital animation, modelling
Scars Remain is a video that considers our lasting environmental impact on Earth. It delves into a semi-realistic future where remnants of human populations persist. Using digital media to represent the breakdown of our world, my body of work conveys the urgency in addressing these issues before it's too late.
My artmaking practice has been influenced by the study and interpretation of the following artists: Adrián Villar Rojas, The End of Imagination; Filip Hodas, Pop Culture Dystopia series.
Marker's Commentary
This sophisticated time-based work presents a bleak future of environmental disaster and human extinction from the overconsumption of fossil fuels. The digital animation opens with a sci-fi drone hurtling through space junk and debris, towards earth. The camera tracks across desolate landscapes littered with abandoned rusting cars, army tanks, and oil fields. It is a vision of a dystopian, post-apocalyptic world, where acid rain, droughts, and freezing snow slowly erode what material goods are left. The layered use of 3D assets creates complex environments, combined with slow panning shots and ambient sound effects, heightening the viewer’s engagement. Radio chatter, video glitch, and surface displacement are successfully integrated to amplify the composited shots. The world building is consistently presented in a convincing and thoughtful manner to reinforce the critical narrative of sustainability.