“My Father in the Cloud, […] is an intimate study of grief and loss, mediated by the augmented imagery of 3D animation and motion-capture technology.

In this project, Patir extends her interest in self-representation and life in the era of the Internet, and problematizes a rather recent phenomenon: losing a loved one in an era in which their digital presence confoundingly carries on. What if the artist took her cue from her late father – an engineer, a telecommunications executive, and a gadget enthusiast – and broached technology’s potential to resuscitate someone no longer alive? Can grief be temporarily arrested by the simulation of his presence, and by the possibility of generating new memories with him?

 My Father in the Cloud is a video essay, a travelog-inspired documentary, that unfolds across the artist’s desktop, as well as in the thickets of the Web and virtual software. Patir, together with animator Yonatan Wasserman, set out on a journey laced with humor and psychological insight to ‘communicate’ with the dead, in order to allow the artist to dance with her father again. “A dad dancing is an essence. Not of the person but of their ‘dadness,’” she says in the film. With a combination of naïveté and an earnestness doomed for disappointment, Patir and Wasserman enlist A.I. technologies and the help of Patir’s family members for this renewed dance with the father through reenactment of his body language, as an act of love.”

Tamar Margalit