Mirrors, Time, and Patterns in Rory Scott’s Impermanence Project

By Laura Neal

Nature is always in motion. It breathes, it bends, it grows, it repeats. As humans, we’ve managed to make our lives stackable. We fit our desires, our responsibilities, our energies, into tight blocks of time. We’ve designed an efficient world where we ostensibly move efficiently together—but what toward? What is the nature of our being and how may we see the bridge between what exists and what is possible while we breathe, while we bend, while we grow, while we repeat.

Creator, Animator, and Reality Extender, Rory Scott is always questioning what is real. When Scott first started working in AR, she wanted to put her work around the city in seemingly impossible places.[1] She would take her videos and static images and put them in AR and film them in the air. Throwing transparent images in space is metaphoric in its process and challenges our recognition of boundaries. Anything that we see can be [digitally] generated and because of this, perhaps everything is a simulation.[2] Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Mixed Reality, and AI are mirrors of our lives which are in repetitive display in Scott’s Impermanence project.

The Impermanence project, currently in its 13th year, captures footage from Scott’s daily life and marks the passage of time, the idea of impermanence, and the existence of patterns in nature that form our reality. The video work reflects the dichotomous relationship between the stability of pattern and the dissolution of time. In many ways, patterns are productive. They surround us daily in architecture, in tradition, even in our speech. This repetition has a tenable power among the populace, and Scott’s work observes our private steps and their constant yet inevitable ending.

In conversation with Rory Scott about the role of patterns and impermanency, she says: “As humans we’re often so close to our patterns that we can’t pull out to see that we’re having the same repetitive thoughts, actions, and emotions that generates the fabric of our lives [and ultimately] the fabric of humanity. I’m trying to make something so people look at patterns and see that there’s this impermanence that repeats itself over and over and think about yourself and where you are in the timeline.” [3]

In Impermanence, Scott reflects both our distance and proximity to patterns. Everything is always ending and beginning again. A cycle that spins the surface of our daily lives. While watching the “Impermanence” video, I noticed all the architecture in the city and the square patterns used to build the buildings we too often lose time inside. The dull equation it takes to make something tall or the societal script that we have all subscribed to.

Scott shares this script as follows: you’re a child, you go to school, you graduate, you go to college, you get a job, you get married, you have children, and after that the script runs out. It’s up to you to do something.[4] Impermanence helps us attend to our personal patterns and how they’ve merged into something larger. A constant cycle that replaces one systemic programming for another.

In this way, Scott is engaging in archival labor. She documents the oft-considered mundane and refocuses our attention towards it. Looking back, we experience the haste of time and the future impact of our daily habits.

The vastness of this project is process-driven and not product-driven, which is significant in a time and worldwide culture where everyone wants an end-product. Through digital mediums like AR, VR, Animation, and AI, Scott mirrors our lives, enlightens our sense of time, and reframes our patterns in the world.

Rory Scott is a multidisciplinary artist, whose work is recognized for its use of patterns, glitter and for its likeness to the Universe. Through both digital and handmade means, Scott explores the ideas of impermanence, the passage of time and the impacts of technology upon the evolution of humanity. She lives outside Detroit and is an Alumni of The School of The Art Institute of Chicago.[5]

Impermanence will be on view at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art in Boulder, CO from October 12, 2023 through January 24, 2024.

Laura Neal (she/her) is a writer, poet, and educator based in Dallas, Texas. Her work is published in various national outlets including the Boston Art Review, BURNAWAY, and the Academy of American Poets.