chronostasis, the artistic conceptual frameworks

(some of my original notes written September 15, 2025 and was featured on September 16th, 2025 for the notyetart panel discussion for their exhibition titled Unraveling for London Design Festival 2025. see the work chronostasis at newartcity and on resonance0000)

In my spare time I write - poetry and reflections that weave science and the humanities together. My focus has been exploring identity, existence, and nondualism through lived experiences. I’ve been using sound to create immersive, multisensory environments as a way to carry those contemplations into the world - light, shadow, glass, water and sound - to create sound environments that feel rich, complex, and otherworldly.

ABOUT CHRONOSTASIS

chronostasis is a series of repetitively moving frames set to a soundscape - an assemblage of audio tracks, sounds and fragments borrowed from nature.

The concept of chronostasis refers to a perceptual illusion of time. The classic example is the “stopped clock illusion,” where, when glancing at a clock, the second hand appears frozen before it continues moving.

The brain here fills in the gap created by that shift in perception, editing our sense of continuity. the experience of momentary stillness that’s entirely created by the brain. That idea fascinates me, because this piece lives in that same suspended space.

I’m drawn to moments where time dilates and the present lingers beyond its ordinary measure. chronostasis reveals that perception itself is elastic…our minds create loops, pauses, associations, and ultimately that shapes into how we experience reality. I try to capture that elasticity in these spaces, often zooming in on an experience so that it can be felt bodily and emotionally, rather than just visually or intellectually. Where sound is experienced as memory, recalled and re-formed based on the present moment’s experiences.

On a personal level, this work was borne out of a kind of necessity. At a time when I was affected by my own physical illness, I created chronostasis as a way to express, explore, and find meaning about self and existence. As my roles and identities were falling away with my health, what remained was a deep desire for stillness and connection. Brain fog rolled in languidly, and memories themselves felt like distant stars and slowly orbiting planets - all shifting and morphing in loops themselves. A confluence of past, present, and future, rewriting itself with each shift in current perception of self, under the quiet snowfall of stillness around me.

For me, chronostasis posits that perception, roles, and identities are fragile, but there is an underlying current of stillness – a resilience of the human spirit that goes beyond identity and role. My hope is that this work gives form to those shifts - overall embracing one’s own complexities, and that it invites others to step into that altered sense of presence and to feel the beauty of that stillness.

nadienne phua
resonance0000

present me here, a voice writing from the ethers ^^ this piece is the original foundation of my writing series and the concepts were life-worn and life-lived into my experience and worldview. it’s taken many years, many levels of joy, confusion, curiosity, suffering, and awe to get to the point where i can finally share them in art, sound, and in writing, and i so deeply want to share the full scope these experiences and thoughts with you all. it is all a beautiful, chaotic confluence of so many emotions experienced simultaneously. it is all a gift. my hope is that anything that i create inspires discourse and collaboration of new constellations of ideas, so please feel free to reach out if you are interested.

if you like my work and want to see more writing like this, it will be featured under my substack series Luminous and Breathing.

see the full version of this post here