YESTERDAY, TODAY, AND TOMORROW IN THE METAVERSE - Panel Discussion

The University of Michigan Digital Studies Institute presents
YESTERDAY, TODAY, AND TOMORROW IN THE METAVERSE
Thursday, February 17, 1-2:30pm EST / 19-20:30h CET
Via Zoom (< Link)

This panel convenes a group of leading international artists and curators working in online spaces in a variety of modalities, including net art, video/animation, game development, VR, XR and the NFT-adjacent art community. The speakers will briefly introduce their own practice and participate in a roundtable discussion that reflects critically on the present concept of the "metaverse," from creative, art historical, and socio-politically-informed perspectives. The conversation will seek to chip away at some of the hype and corporately co-opted buzzwords clouding the present discourse in order to underscore some important legacies and trace a path for the trajectory of the most compelling work in the metaverse.

Panelists:
LaTurbo Avedon, Artist/Avatar
Yvette Granata, Artist, Digital Studies Institute faculty, Assistant Professor, Dept of Film, TV & Media, University of Michigan
Auriea Harvey, Artist, Professor of Games, Kunsthochschule Kassel
Tina Sauerlaender, Director & Head Curator, Peer to Space
Moderator: Marisa Olson, Artist, Executive Director, Digital Studies Institute

peer to space launches Virtual Art Space with inaugural show (Im)Material Matter

With its Virtual Art Space, peer to space further develops the concept of their previous online exhibitions. In the virtual exhibition space on the open source platform Mozilla Hubs. With the Virtual Art Space, peer to space establishes a new presentation format beyond the white cube to fully embrace the potential of the virtual realm independent from physical limitations. The open and dynamic structure of the floating islands allows to explore and engage with new forms of digital curating.

Spatial Design by Mohsen Hazrati

(IM)MATERIAL MATTER

Curated by Peggy Schoenegge

With works by Banz & Bowinkel, Entangled Others (Sofia Crespo and Feileacan McCormick), Mohsen Hazrati, Armin Keplinger, Nadine Kolodziey, Lauren Moffatt, Chiara Passa, Sabrina Ratté, Dagmar Schürrer

 Opening & Launch: Oct 28, 2021, 7 pm (CET)

Link: hubs.mozilla.com/owtpwaD/im-material-matter

(Im)Material Matter is dedicated to digital sculptures, their material and matter. The works highlight the potential of sculptural artworks in the virtual realm. Beyond the restrictions of physicality, sculptures take on new shapes and forms. The sculptural works float in the exhibition space. They do not need a bottom or plinth to stand on. This positioning makes them perceptible and accessible from every conceivable viewpoint, even from below and above. Their size can be freely determined. The 3D shapes of the sculptures are not static, but dynamic. Some consist of several parts moving freely in space. How the works are installed in the virtual art space would not be possible in the physical and creates a new approach to sculptures. As a result, they shift the parameters of the traditional definition of sculpture by deconstructing its solid matter. The constitution of the space, the textures of the void as well as the shape of the sculptures simulate materiality. Their surfaces are reminiscent of physical material like metal, plastic, or clay. They hyper realistically allude to tangible materials. In the exhibition, the sculptures become permeable. Visitors can pass through and enter the inner sphere of the artwork. The dissolution of physical boundaries once again reveals the distinctive conditions of the virtual. The works oscillate between the material and immaterial, defining a matter of virtual materiality.

With kind support by Stiftung Kunstfonds | NEUSTART KULTUR

peer to space’s curator Peggy Schoenegge at WISE 2020

peer to space’s curator and project manager Peggy Schoenegge moderated a panel with Patricia Detmering (Artist), Giorgio Vitale (Director Synthesis Gallery) and Li Zhenhua (Curator, Artists and Producer) on VR Art in China and the West for WISE 2020.

The talk will be streamed on August 29, 2020, 2:55 to 3:40 pm, CET Berlin.

WISE is a Future Think Tank. It is China’s most important global summit connecting thought leaders of the creative industries, science and the tech community on both sides of the Great Firewall to discuss essential questions about how we want and should live in the future.

 Further Information

Laval Virtual Conference - Panel on Digital and Virtual Art Exhibitions IRL and the Virtual World

Panel at Laval Virtual Conference:
Digital and Virtual Art Exhibitions IRL and the Virtual World

April 23, 2020 at 4-6 pm Berlin time / 10 am -12 pm New York time
At: Laval Virtual Conference (at Laval Virtual World)

Short Talks by
Michael Connor (Artistic Director, rhizome.org)
Christiane Paul (Adjunct Curator of Digital Art | Director/Chief Curator Whitney Museum | Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, The New School)
Alfredo Salazar-Caro (Co-founder DiMoDA)
Tina Sauerlaender (Co-founder peer to space and Radiance VR)
Panel Discussion moderated by
Julie Walsh (Founder Walsh Projects)

How to join the conference?
The participation is for free.
Register for the conference
Download and install the Laval Virtual World (you can use it on your desktop)
Login and explore the world.
Read guidelines how to attend the conferences
The full schedule of the events can be found here.

WALKTHROUGHS by Synthesis Gallery: Martina Menegon and Tina Sauerlaender

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

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

peer to space’s curator Peggy Schoenegge at Process Festival

Peggy Schoenegge will give a talk about her work as a curator with a focus on digital and new media art at this year’s Process Festival, Dortmund on October 6th. The topic of the festival is humans and machines. In keeping with the theme Peggy will especially concentrate on this relationship in her work. She will also bring two VR artworks by Martina Menegon and The Swan Collective, presented by Radiance VR.

Further information and program

peer to space’s curator Peggy Schoenegge at Vienna Design Week

Peggy Schoenegge will be part of the Designing Conference 2 at this year’s Vienna Design Week. She gives the talk „Art Unframed – VR als künstlerisches Medium“ and will be talking about VR as an artistic medium on October 4th, 5 pm.

Vienna Design Week

September 29th to October 7th, 2018 

Further informations and program

peer to space at VRHAM!

peer to space’s director Tina Sauerlaender and curator Peggy Schoenegge are part of this year’s VRHAM! Festival in Hamburg, Germany. Tina is part of the jury as well as moderating the panel on VR and art VR here to talk! on Saturday, June 9th at 5 pm. Peggy will open the discourse program with a keynote What the f*** is VR on Thursday, June 7th 2018.

VRHAM! – Virtual Reality and Art Festival Hamburg 2018

June 7th to June 17th 2018

VRHAM! is Germany’s first artistic Virtual Reality festival. VRHAM! is presenting a large variety of outstanding international VR experiences in Hamburg’s Oberhafenquartier, unique in its form and sure to transcend the borders of traditional perception and experience of art.

Further information and program

peer to space at DIGIFEST in Toronto

Install view: Li Alin, Enter Me Tonight, House of Electronic Arts Basel, 2017 / Photo by Franz Wamhof

VR projects at Digifest:

H.E.A.R.T. by Erin Gee and Alex M. Lee
Enter Me Tonight by Li Alin

Presented by the Goethe-Institut Toronto
Curated by Tina Sauerlaender (Berlin) and Erandy Vergara (Montreal)

At the invitation of the Goethe-Institut curators Tina Sauerländer and Erandy Vergara have selected VR works for this year’s Toronto Digifest, including two recent pieces by Berlin-based Canadian artist Li Alin and Montreal-based artist Erin Gee in collaboration with South Korean-born, US-based artist Alex M. Lee. The artists use humor and irony to engage in controversial topics: emotions in first-person shooter video games and war in the case of Gee, and a futuristic exploration on human reproduction in technology-oriented times in the case of Alin.

Further information here / Tina Sauerlaender on the Goethe Blog.

Radiance VR - The new online platform for VR Art

Radiance is an online research platform and database for artistic VR experiences founded by Philip Hausmeier (Metaphysiscs VR) and Tina Sauerlaender (peer to space). Its mission is to present visual artists from all over the world working in the medium of Virtual Reality. Radiance wants to create visibility and accessibility for VR art and for a faster adoption of virtual technologies in general. Outside of huge VR industries like gaming, artistic VR experiences will become more visible and impact society through museum shows and eventually through everyone’s living rooms.

Artists: A / A, Mert Akbal, Li Alin, Salome Asega & Reese Donohue & Tongkwai Lulin, Banz & Bowinkel, Jörg Brinkmann, Leo Castaneda, Magali Daniaux & Cédric Pigot, Claudia Hart, Claire Hentschker, Martha Hipley, Rindon Johnson, Marc Lee, Serena Lee, Olivia Mc Gilchrist, Martina Menegon, Mélodie Mousset & Naëm Baron, Zeesy Powers, Tabita Rezaire, Dennis Rudolph, Jakob Kudsk Steensen, Miyö Van Stenis, The Swan Collective, Tamiko Thiel, Fiona Valentine Thomann, Theo Triantafyllidis… more soon.

Slideshow: artistic VR experiences by Martina Menegon, plug your noise and try to hum, 2017 // Li Alin, Enter Me Tonight, 2016 // Jakob Kudsk Steensen, Dome of Gated Ecologies, 2017 // Tabita Rezaire, Premium Connect (Real Deal), 2017 // Rindon Johnson, My Daughter Aaliyah, 2016 // The Swan Collective, NowForeVR, 2017

TALK: Virtual Reality in Art

With Philip Hausmeier, Tina Sauerländer, Sven Slazenger, and Dr. Ursula Ströbele

Virtual Reality technologies are almost omnipresent, but what does this mean for art? Are those technologies capable of expanding our visions of art and design? Can Virtual Reality bring together the digital and physically-spatial experiences? 

April 12th, 2017, 7 pm
Eigen + Art Lab, Berlin
Event on Facebook
Image: Eigen and Art Lab