A woman goes blind and begins questioning reality after her vision is partially restored by an experimental bionic eye device.

Emm is an artist who works in video and performance. After going blind due to an accident, she volunteers to be a test subject for a new and experimental bionic eye device, which transmits video from two wearable cameras to the optic nerve in her brain, partially restoring her vision. After the company developing the technology suddenly files for bankruptcy and ceases operations, Emm continues to live with the device for several years. With the help of her creative partner, Bea, she learns to use it as a tool for creating new work until they notice something quite unusual about some of the images produced by the device, which leads them to investigate the cause thoroughly.

I've Seen Water is a narrative science fiction film that draws on recent development in neuroprosthetics and generative artificial intelligence to reflect on the present moment, when the veracity of nearly all visual information is unreliable. My work strives to use cinematic poetry to elevate common situations to an ecstatic realm, appropriating sci-fi, disaster, and horror genre tropes to depict the world at its most unstable and irrational. Likewise, stereoscopic (3D) imagery—a core formal element in my practice—lends another degree of estrangement, elevating reality into hyperreality so we can see more clearly. Inspired by real events, this project confronts our rapidly evolving relationship to medical engineering and technological mediation, as well as the AI boom, arising out of a sense that the dystopian visions of science fiction are becoming indistinguishable from contemporary life.