Brain Island: Hyperreal City constructs an imagined civilisation through the intersection of religion, philosophy, architecture, and postmodern fantasy. The work explores how environments, symbols, and systems of representation shape collective imagination and individual consciousness within contemporary society.

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Drawing from Michel Foucault’s concept of “heterotopia” — spaces that exist simultaneously within and outside conventional social structures — the work presents a fictional urban system composed of contradictory spaces. These environments appear ordered and idealised, yet contain tensions between reality and fantasy, control and freedom, individuality and collective identity.

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Influenced by semiotics and post-internet art, Brain Island employs symbolic characters, architectural forms, and constructed environments to examine how meaning is produced and circulated through visual culture. Performance, digital compositing, and virtual imagery create a surreal world where ideology operates not only through language and institutions, but also through aesthetics, technology, and everyday experiences.

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Through the constant negotiation between fantasy and reality, the work investigates the formation of consciousness within mediated environments. Rather than presenting a simple opposition between utopia and dystopia, Brain Island reveals a more ambiguous condition in which truth, belief, and perception are continuously reconstructed.

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Combining green-screen performance, digital compositing, 3D modelling, and virtual world-building, the project reflects on the increasing influence of technology and image-based culture on contemporary life. The imagined city becomes a psychological and ideological landscape — a place where identity, social structures, and human desires are continuously produced and transformed.