WALKTHROUGHS by Synthesis Gallery: Martina Menegon and Tina Sauerlaender

Bildschirmfoto 2020-04-13 um 16.13.58.png

WALKTHROUGHS by Synthesis Gallery
April 20 at 6 pm Berlin time / Noon New York time
Live Streaming on Facebook here
ZOOM Link here
 

Martina Menegon will introduce her VR works and be in conversation with peer to space’s Director Tina Sauerlaender. They will speak about the perception of self and the creation of identity in the digital world. The talk will be moderated by George Vitale (Synthesis Gallery).

About the series Walkthroughs : VR art live streamed through the artist's eyes. A weekly meetup happening online with curators joining the conversation and creatives that, in turn, put the headset on, share their screen and walk us through the VR work. The walkthroughs focus on providing an overview of the artist’s creative process and insights into the work as heard from the artists themselves, as they walk us through it.

Image: Martina Menegon, ‘when you are close to me I shiver’, VR experience, still, 2020


Synthesis Gallery
Martina Menegon

THIS COULD BE YOU – Disembodiment in Virtual Reality Art

THIS COULD BE YOU – Disembodiment in Virtual Reality Art

With: Claire Hentschker (US), Jessy Jetpacks (ARE/ UK), Martina Menegon (IT/AUT), Zeesy Powers (US)

Curated by: Peggy Schoenegge (peer to space)

At: Overkill Festival, The Netherlands

From: November 23rd to 25th, 2018

Today we communicate via several digital applications, and present our identity on the Internet. Social VR enables us to meet our friends’ avatars in a virtual space independently from our body’s actual place. Thus being evocative of the plot of the Sci-Fi movie Matrix (1999), in which the physical body stays in a bunk while the consciousness acts in a virtual place.

Martina Menegon, All Around Me Are Familiar Faces, artistic VR experience, still, 2018

Martina Menegon, All Around Me Are Familiar Faces, artistic VR experience, still, 2018

In 1991, Hans Moravec wrote in his essay The Universal Robot that the human body is disused and won’t be necessary in our future anymore. He said it would be possible to download one’s consciousness to a computer. By transferring the mind to a technological medium the body would becomes insignificant. As a result human beings would not be embodied and their existence would not depend on biological mortality anymore. Consequently human beings would become immortal.

With recent technological progress Moravec’s idea no longer seems completely absurd. Virtual Reality (VR) as a technological and artistic medium enables users to experience disembodiment. The exhibition THIS COULD BE YOU. Disembodiment in Virtual Reality is dedicated to the feeling of incorporeality. The title refers to Zeesy Powers’ eponymous VR artwork, in which the user inhabits the body of an old woman. Over the course of time the body of the old woman becomes the body of the user. Entering a virtual world allow users to immerse themselves in a completely different place without a physical body. There, users can be everyone and everything. Feeling present in the virtual space, makes them forget about their bodies in reality.

VR experiences implicate future living scenarios but also reflect the current state of our society and its relation to technology. Claire Hentschker shows a deserted world without any humans. While reflecting the presence, her work gives an impression of what a disembodied future of formerly inhabited places could look like. Jessy Jetpacks plays with the re-embodiment in the virtual room and questions wether our bodies have a memory and if such an experience has consequences. Martina Menegon and Zeesy Powers also confront the users with bodies that are not theirs. While Menegon provides her 3D scanned face as a mask-like object, the users interact with; Powers mirrors the user as a 90 years old woman. By doing so, they create a vision of what life with an immaterial body could be like and what it might or might not feel like.

THIS COULD BE YOU. Disembodiment in Virtual Reality is part of the Overkill Festival 2018 in Enschede (NL). The festival regroups art, games, movies and performances and opens a new discourse.

The artistic VR experiences are presented in cooperation with Radiance VR.

Link to the Facebook Event

Website of Overkill Festival

UNCANNY CONDITIONS - A Virtual Reality Exhibition

Artists: Salome Asega & Reese Donohue & Tongkwai Lulin (US), Geoffrey Lillemon (FR), Martina Menegon (IT/AT), Jakob Kudsk Steensen (DK/US)

Curated by: Tina Sauerländer and Peggy Schoenegge

Exhibition at whiteBOX, Atelierstraße 1, 81671 Munich, Germany // For FNY Festival, Werksviertel, Munich, Germany // Opening: September 1 // Duration: September 1–10, 2017

The VR exhibition UNCANNY CONDITIONS delves into the challenges of human living in the digital age reflected in four artistic virtual reality experiences. Uncanny means strange or mysterious and refers to something beyond the ordinary or normal. The term Uncanny Valley refers to robots or avatars designed as humanoids. They appear almost, but never exactly, human and evoke an uncanny irritation for the viewer, a lack of authenticity. In this sense, uncanniness could also refer to digitally created imagery almost indistinguishable from reality. All these meanings occur in the virtual reality exhibition UNCANNY CONDITIONS.