UNLEASHED UTOPIAS - Exhibition of the VR ART PRIZE by DKB in Cooperation with CAA Berlin

UNLEASHED UTOPIAS. Artistic Speculations about Today and Tomorrow in the Metaverse

Opening: September 8, 2023, 7 pm

Award Ceremony: September 15, 2023, 7 pm

At: Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin

Artists: Marlene Bart, Anan Fries, Mohsen Hazrati, Rebecca Merlic, Lauren Moffatt

Curator: Dr. Tina Sauerlaender

The notion of a better world is closely tied to utopia as a theme. The term literally describes a wonderful place that does not exist. It means that the design for an ideal society is a criticism of the current situation. Utopias are based on questions such as: What happens if we change a couple of rules? How can we live well together? Thus, utopias also inherently have great potential for societal change and visions for a better future.

In this exhibition, the grant winners of the VR ART PRIZE of the DKB in Cooperation with CAA Berlin show how we might be able to deploy new technologies for a more just, multifaceted, and personal coexistence. They are alert to the changes in values and norms currently going on in society and link their speculations to topical debates. With the help of virtual reality and site-specific installations, the artists create accessible, immersive, experiential utopias. They critically speculate upon artificial intelligence, 3D scanning, animation techniques, research in scientific fields, or the metaverse.

Marlene Bart works with digitized natural history artifacts, bringing them to life in virtual worlds and producing a new perspective of our concept of nature. Anan Fries renounces the division between nature and technology to overcome the boundaries between biological genders, creating a world in which all bodies could be pregnant. Rebecca Merlic celebrates the liberation of binary identities, physical transformation, and the diversity of human individuality. Mohsen Hazrati combines figures from Iranian myths and soothsaying traditions with forms of artificial intelligence, altered by the artist to provide us with cryptic advice for our futures. Lauren Moffatt looks at the interior human, gathering data from it via artificial intelligence and combining it with painting to create a multilayered, intimate landscape.

The artists’ unleashed utopias rattle not only societal norms but also the purely profit-oriented use of new technologies. With their radical speculations, they open up new perspectives of our lives, our coexistence. Through their visions, they reinforce the values such as openness, diversity, and tolerance that should characterize our society now and in the future. And it is precisely in that where utopia lies.

The exhibition UNLEASHED UTOPIAS. Artistic Speculations about Today and Tomorrow in the Metaverse, produced by the VR ART PRIZE of the DKB in Cooperation with CAA Berlin, will be on display from September 9 through November 5, 2023, at the Haus am Lützowplatz. 

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SEED SYSTEMS - Speculative Ecologies in XR Art Today

SEED SYSTEMS

Speculative Ecologies in XR Art Today

Initiated by STYLY

Curated by Miriam Arbus (Sky Fine Foods) and Peggy Schoenegge (peer to space)

Artists: Alison Bennett (AUS) | Nicholas Delap (UK) | Matthew D. Gantt (US) | Mohsen Hazrati (IRN/DE) | Nadine Kolodziey (DE) | Lauren Moffatt (AUS/DE)

 

In cooperation with SOMA Berlin and Radiance

At: SOMA 300 Berlin, Eylauer Strasse 9, 10965 Berlin (DE) and online via STYLY

Duration: September 10 - 30, 2022

Opening: September 9, 2022, 6 - 10 pm

Closing event: September 30, 2022, 12-6 pm

Accompanying Event Schedule tba on Instagram >>> Follow @stylyglobal @peertospace @skyfinefoods @radiance_vr

In the age of the extractivist Anthropocene, nature is dominated by human impact. We built capitalistic structures by extracting and selling natural resources for our own benefit. The dramatic increase in CO2 emissions since the Industrial Revolution and the devastating effects of human activities on the global environment have profoundly changed the Earth system. Escalating climate disasters like wildfires, floodings or frost call for a change in overall behavior. The resulting environmental precarity underlines the need for new, innovative visions for the future. 

Following the idea of neo-ecologies, virtual technologies provoke new states of being, illustrating concepts for our future. Reformulating approaches to environmental questions, interactive Expanded Realities (XR) immerse us into speculative ecosystems. Divergent futures emerge as a digital garden, where growth is as inevitable as decay. The tensions of human impact are deeply rooted within the exploration of possibilities. In this discourse, humans’ inevitable depletion of resources is the critical object of consideration. 

Grappling with these topics, the XR art exhibition Seed Systems emerges as a collaborative cultivation emerges as. Six international artists use augmented and virtual realities to explore speculative approaches to future human-nature relationships, forming a spatial and sonic occurrence of growth and foliage. They unite their expertise in virtual world-building and plant knowledge, shaping alternative ecologies and biologies. The artworks create networks and systems of seeds as future concepts for environments. Activated in XR through computer-generated images (CGI), animation, point clouds and interactions, the digital biosphere – nourished by visions – grows as a space for meeting and reflection. In this speculative approach, new possibilities for action, care-taking, and reciprocity flourish, visualizing a necessary change in perspective.

 Alison Bennett considers Australian native flowers as celestial encounters by exploring vegetal thinking, digital gardening and post-human neuroqueer phenomenology through today’s possibilities of expanded photography. Nicholas Delap examines histories of folklore and the nettle plant – a mysterious and overlooked plant whose medicinal qualities make it one of the most potent and widely available healing tools. Matthew D. Gantt interconnects responsive sound elements with the visual, engaging with Brian Eno’s notion of generative electronic music as bottom-up gardening – emergent structures flourish with no predicated finale. Mohsen Hazrati creates a virtual bioluminescence with a metaphorical approach to understanding wine as an alternative source of energy, which he considers in the context of Irianian culture. Nadine Kolodziey explores how to plant something digital and intangible in a physical space, while playfully questioning future interactions within our technologized environment. Lauren Moffatt establishes cycles of flourishing and decay in nature, examining how different virtual and physical ecosystems become linked by human movement and behavior.

Inspired by gardens that carefully construct spaces of experience and interaction, the exhibition considers how new media can be used to reimagine ecological systems and facilitate mindful, inclusive futures. Planting seeds of reflection and growth raises the question of what we can do at a small scale to initiate patterns for the greater system. Should this practice be considered rebellious, productive or promising? Can this artistic activism really contribute to a positive development of our planet’s ecology? How can the influence of humankind change for the better? 

ENVISIONING THE FUTURE – VR Art Exhibition in Washington D.C – co-curated by Tina Sauerlaender

Artists: A / A (Germany), Banz & Bowinkel (Germany), Scott Benesiinaabandan (Canada), Julian Bonequi (Mexico), Paloma Dawkins (Canada), Claudia Hart (USA), Jakob Kudsk Steensen (Denmark/USA)

Curators: Erandy Vergara and Tina Sauerlaender

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Our future is constantly redefined and renegotiated in both real and virtual spaces in times of political tension between communities, countries, and cultures. Curiosity and the spirit of discovery juxtapose resentments and  fear towards the yet unknown or the so-called Other. Yet the Other struggles to create spaces and to envision a future she/he is actively a part of.

Seven artists from different geographic locations and backgrounds discuss worldviews in utopian or apocalyptic, cultural or natural contexts in their virtual artworks. They are hypothetical imaginations that reflect about possible states for worlds. Together, they ask what is the future we would like to live in and how can we get there? They call us to rethink the present in order to envision the future.

The artists take us to parallel worlds: apocalytpic moments (A / A, Germany); archipelagos removed from physical laws (Banz & Bowinkel, Germany); native Canadian history and future visions (Scott Benesiinaabandan, Canada); human birth and death on Earth and on Mars (Julian Bonequi, Mexico); journey into the fabled unknown (Paloma Dawkins, Canada); liminal and mythological wonderlands (Claudia Hart, USA); tourism and technology facing climate change (Jakob Kudsk Steensen, Denmark/USA). All artists use Virtual Reality, the new medium in art, as their tool of expression. This medium creates a blank space for new visions. In virtual reality, the viewers are in the center and  surrounded entirely. They decide where to look and where to go; they co-shape the world they are in. Viewers are assigned the active role of the user. Just like the virtual artwork is complete through the actions of the users, these users are also are able to rethink and reshape their own physical reality.

This selection of current VR projects combines the passion and expertise of two curators: Erandy Vergara's engagement with postcolonial and feminist perspectives on media art and theory (Mexico/Montreal) and Tina Sauerlaender's curatorial engagement with digital technologies and Virtual Reality (Berlin).

Invited by the Goethe-Institut and Studio XX in Montréal, they developed the concept for their exhibition series “Critical Approaches in Virtual Reality Art”, where this exhibition Envisioning the Future is part of.

October 24 to 28, 2018 at Halcyon Arts Lab, Washington D.C

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Link to the announcement on the Goethe-Institute’s website

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