Diana Thater’s (1962, San Francisco) work draws on disciplines such as literature, sociology and behavioural science to explore the interactions between human beings, animals and nature. The Individual as a Species (1996) resonates with Electric Mind, a script published by the artist the same year and inspired by Rachel in Love (1987), a science fiction novel by American writer Pat Murphy (1955). In the story, a scientist transfers the consciousness – or “electric mind” – of his deceased daughter into the brain of a chimpanzee. Three of the five monitors in Thater’s installation display show footage of a monkey undergoing daily training at an animal centre. The monitors are placed directly on the ground, lending the images a materiality in the space. By multiplying points of view and disrupting linear editing, Thater encourages the viewer to make new associations and resist narrative progression. She inserts colour fields and isolated syllables into the visual flow–elements that appear meaningless at first glance but function as part of a deliberate narrative deconstruction. These interventions help to construct a new filmic grammar through which the artist challenges binary oppositions such as wild/domestic or nature/technology.