Concrescendo is a short experimental animation that captures a moment of memory returning while I play Einaudi’s Experience on piano. The film is shaped by Alfred North Whitehead’s idea of concrescence, where a new experience comes into being through the meeting of past and present. By combining footage from my time in Toronto with the physical act of performance, the piece reflects how memory is not just a replay but a dynamic, creative process. Whitehead’s philosophy of process aligns with the Science New Wave’s view that science and art are not separate but mutually generative.

In the process of becoming, lived experience crescendos into concrescence.

Artist Statement:

Concrescendo expresses my experience of two distinct actual occasions. These are unique and irreducible moments of experience that came together in concrescence, the process by which past and present experiences are integrated into a new, unified subject. One day in February, I was sight-reading Einaudi’s Experience on the piano when I recalled, or prehended, a moment from 2022. Prehension means I apprehended and incorporated that past moment into my present experience. The moment of recollection and the original moment remembered flowed together to create who I was in that present instance. I became a concrescing subject, actively synthesizing past experiences into the present.

The remembered moment took place while I was walking between OCAD University and the art studio I was renting in Kensington Market in Toronto. At the time, I was also practicing Baduanjin Qigong at the Shaolin Temple in Chinatown. These three locations were close together, and I often moved between them throughout my day while completing my BFA thesis.

The particular moment I remembered happened as I was approaching the corner of Spadina and Dundas after leaving the AGO. I became intensely aware of everything that had brought me to that point in time. There was a bittersweetness in knowing I would be moving away once I graduated. I recognized the moment as something fleeting, something that would never return. I wanted to stay in it, to stretch it out and feel it as deeply as possible before it passed. That longing was a subjective form, the emotional texture of the moment as I lived it.

Even though the moment ended, it became a concrescence. It was an integration of various experiential elements into one lived reality. It also became an instance of objective immortality. The moment was gone, but it continued to live on in me. I can still recall the emotional quality, the surrounding nexus of experiences, and the prehension that allowed this past to remain present. When I remembered that moment while playing Experience, it became part of a new concrescence. The remembered self became alive in the present, carried forward in the flow of music.

I created this animated video to express the multiplicity of being a concrescing subject. Through remembering, I reencounter more of myself. The visual language draws from my earlier film Carasoul. In Concrescendo, windows emerge from my body at the piano, revealing both the remembered moment and the act of remembering. These layers form a nexus of shared prehensions. I used personal photos and videos from that time in Toronto: scenes from Chinatown, my graduate exhibition, time spent with friends and family. These moments stand in contrast to my current life in Georgia. That contrast brings added emotional depth and complexity. The conceptual work that began in Carasoul continues here in a more personal and focused way.

Back in Toronto, I often listened to Experience while practicing Qigong. Of all the pieces I played, this one filled me with the greatest intensity. It was not tied to one particular emotion. It simply carried a great deal of feeling. I understand the sheet music for this song as an eternal object, a pure potential that can be realized differently in each context. When I play it, it becomes an actual occasion, a living moment that shapes who I am. Its harmony and emotional density create a genuine experience of beauty.

I often feel filled with remembered experiences, too many to fully express in sound or image. Since moving away, memories of Toronto have become especially tender. This film is a way to give shape to what I still carry. The past feels vast and sometimes overwhelming, but also too meaningful to leave unspoken.

Whitehead describes reality as a process of creative advance. Every actual occasion gathers what came before and brings something new into being. Concrescendo gives form to this idea. Two moments separated by time come together in a single act of becoming. The self I was and the self I am now are not separate. They unfold through the same ongoing rhythm. When I play Experience, I feel that rhythm. The music connects what has been with what is happening now.

To remember is not just to bring something back. It is to transform it. Each memory becomes part of a new concrescence. It shapes my present self. Concrescendo makes this process visible. Memory is not still or silent. It moves through me and helps form how I experience the world today.

Just as the past moves through the present, the future does not sit waiting in advance. It does not exist until I begin to create it. Each choice, each movement, each act of remembering and imagining helps bring the next moment into being. Concrescence is not only a process of integration. It is also how I step into what has not yet fully formed. In Concrescendo, I follow the echoes of the past, but I also listen for what is still beginning to take shape. The future comes into focus as I play.