To the river

Video, 2023

40’03”

The caustic phenomenon on the water’s surface is an ideal environment for contemplation. It resembles a web, the Internet, or mycelium, ​​rhizome. It is also a metaphor for the impermanence of the world and changes, as well as of our worldview, life habits, and beliefs. The video also refers to the Kakhovka tragedy of 2023, which occurred due to the Russian occupiers undermining the dam of the reservoir.

In optics, a caustic or caustic network is the envelope of light rays reflected or refracted by a curved surface or object, or the projection of that envelope of rays on another surface. The caustic is a curve or surface to which each light is tangent, defining a boundary of an envelope of rays as a curve of concentrated light. The theory of caustics is directly related to one of the sections of modern mathematics — the theory of catastrophes. 

The concentration of light, especially sunlight, can burn. The word caustic comes from the Greek καυστός, burnt, via the Latin causticus, burning.

Caustics occur not only in the propagation of light but also in several other wave phenomena. Ship waves can be considered caustics of gravity waves on water.