Recursive Empyrean

DMTPortal

FILE SÃO PAULO 2025: SYNTHETIKA – Art and Technology – Shorts Films AI
Electronic Language International Festival

Recursive Empyrean – Canada

Recursive Empyrean merges fractal-based visuals with an original ambient soundtrack, guiding viewers through infinite loops of creation and collapse. Each cos mic structure reflects itself into eternity, unveiling deeper mysteries with every shift in perspective. Radiant geometry and ambient pulses draw awareness beyond time and space, where subtle patterns reveal gentle truths, echoing the hum of cosmic purpose.

BIO

John Dobbie, a Classical Animation graduate from Sheridan College in Canada, has spent over 20 years shaping digital worlds for franchises like Call of Duty and God of War. Now based in New York’s Capital Region with his family, he crafts immersive cosmic-themed works as DMTPORTAL, merging technology, mysticism, and decades of experience to expand perception beyond the ordinary.

Three Supermarkets
Three Supermarkets is an infinite loop film with a shopping cart riding across multiple coexisting fictional supermarkets. As the first episode of the Phygital Supermarket Trilogy, this film explores the hybrid compositing of the emerging physical and digital media and techniques. The production process of this film uses industrial-grade six-axis Staubli robot arm as shooting equipment, green screen shooting, volumetric video capture, photogrammetry, Cinema 4D Mograph, Redshift shading & rendering, 2D/3D compositing, and other custom build techniques and workflows. Familiar but neglected objects, such as apples and snack bags, were scanned as either static models or animated model sequences from the physical world to the digital space.

La trahison des tapis
The title is a reference to the famous work by René Magritte “The Treachery of Images”. Even though the video installation alludes to it, the viewer is immediately aware that this is not a real carpet. What you see is an animation, a digital carpet, its contemporary variant. However, the patterns of the replica show that it could have been made in the west of Iran. The movements, which appear surreal, are reminiscent of a state of intoxication. Whether this was triggered by drugs, or only arose from the lively imagination of a tired child, is left to the speculation of the viewer. The work reflects the importance of traditional arts and crafts in the modern digital world. It is the first of a series of digital carpets.
The animation has a realistic resolution of 4k, is 03:55 minutes, and runs in an infinite loop on a 65-inch display.

Morphosis
Morphosis uses artificial neural networks to create morphing images of scale. The system explores how natural structures from the most tiny to the most huge, share aesthetic properties, as recognized by the trained network, and recreated in continuous flowing sequence via these connections. It’s a study of the seemingly infinite nature of space and natural physical structure, which can loop back on itself to give endless visual exploration and variation.

オラファー·エリアソン
اولافور الياسون
奥拉维尔·埃利亚松
אולאפור אליאסון
Олафур Элиассон
Infinite Staircase (Umschreibung)

Permanently installed in the atrium of an office building in Munich, two spiral staircases interlock with each other, creating a continuous loop in the form of a double helix. To plan the work, a double helix was projected onto the surface of a sphere. The heights of the steps vary slightly to compensate for the curvature of the staircases, growing shallower at the poles. Precise engineering was necessary to enable the structure to balance on one point.
The continuous loop of Umschreibung contrasts starkly with the office courtyard in Munich where it is installed. Umschreibung – which can be translated as ‘circumscription’ or ‘periphrasis’ – proposes a movement without destination, a space defined by motion rather than walls.