Exhibition

Inexsistens: Lovestory

Participants
  • Jakub Wróblewski
    Jakub Wróblewski

    Jakub Wróblewski

    An interdisciplinary artist, director and dop. He works in video, interactive film, audiovisual narrative, film theory, graphic narrative structures, immersion activities and art-and-science projects. The scope of his search is wide, and his artistic strategy is based on exploring and going beyond the boundaries of the medium he currently works with. A holder of post-doctoral degree, he works at his alma mater as a professor at the Faculty of Media Art; head of 3D and Virtual Occurrences II Studio / Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.

    inexsistens www 3dZwII
  • Przemysław Danowski
    Przemysław Danowski

    Przemysław Danowski

    An interdisciplinary artist, director and camera operator. He works in video, interactive film, audiovisual narrative, film theory, graphic narrative structures, immersion activities and art-and-science projects. The scope of his search is wide, and his artistic strategy is based on exploring and going beyond the boundaries of the medium he currently works with. A holder of post-doctoral degree, he works at his alma mater as an assistant professor at the Faculty of Media Art; head of degree Studio of 3D and Virtual Occurrences. The scope of his search is wide, and his artistic strategy is based on exploring and going beyond the boundaries of the medium he currently works with. A holder of post-doctoral degree, he works at his alma mater as an assistant professor at the Faculty of Media Art; head of degree Studio of 3D and Virtual Occurrences.

    www inexsistens
  • Andrei-Isakov
    Andrei Isakov
    Andrei Isakov

    Andrei Isakov

    Born in 1989 in Minsk, Belarus. Graduate of the A.K. Glebov Belarusian Academy of Arts (2011) and the Faculty of Media Art of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (2012-2016). During his studies, he conducted research related to the status of computer games in contemporary art. He launched and led the Animagica academic club. He currently works as an assistant and lecturer at the Faculty of Media Art of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. He teaches classes in 3D graphics, modelling, animation and virtual reality, also works as an artist and graphic designer for the Rolling Monks gaming company and is involved in various art and social projects. Since 2016, he has been collaborating with art groups, including Inexsistens (Jakub Wróblewski, Przemysław Danowski) and Kissinger Twins (Dawid Marcinkowski, Katarzyna Kifert). In 2020, he collaborated on Krzysztof Garbaczewski’s production of Divine Comedy, creating one of the characters in the Unity engine. Also in 2020, he took part in the Polish game jam “Stay at home – make games”. Together with Agata Chodera they created an art game “Their Hearts, My Hands”, which was about rebuilding a community during the pandemic. He was a guest and participant at Games for Impact 2020, a festival dedicated to socially engaged games. 

    wsm inexsistens 3dZwII
Gallery
Inexsistens: Lovestory

Jakub Wróblewski, Andrei Isakov, Przemysław Danowski
LOVESTORY, 2020
VR experience, six degrees of freedom HMD, motion capture, audio system
choreography: Magdalena Przybysz 
For viewers 18 years of age or older 

Jakub Wróblewski, Andrei Isakov, Przemysław Danowski, Piotr Kucia
LOVESTORY. Postsexual telematic experience, 2021
Imagine Film Festival, Amsterdam Live VR performance,
support: HTC VIVE, Bones Studio, Bemix Media Group
Performed by: Liwia Bargiel, Bartosz Kiełbowicz 

Lovestory is an interactive experience in virtual reality, participants given a high degree of freedom. Key concepts include simulation – intermediation of the physical body by its virtual version. Consequently, the body (defined as the user’s actual body and its avatar) becomes the main subject, object and carrier of the experience. Bespoke technology-captured motion engaged in by two performers (real people) is the main trope of the act. 

Artists equate the idea of acquiring the body and taking over another being with tulpa1, a concept derived from the Tibetan mysticism and occasionally applied as a synonym for “phenomenon” or “thought-form”. The concept of an experience scenario arises from interest in early science fiction film adaptations. 

Explorations within the project focus on VR and the transhumanist idea of a virtual connection between two people, studies of bodily structure, and the capacity for expressing one’s motoric abilities through a specific aesthetic. The project addresses interpersonal contact limitations associated with current pandemic circumstances (lockdowns, social distancing, controlled accessibility of shared functional space, travel restrictions, etc.), and the consequent pushout of social contact into virtual reality. 

1The Collins dictionary offers a simplified definition of tulpa: “a being or object that is created in the imagination by visualization techniques such as in Tibetan mysticism”, see tulpa in: Collins Dictionary [online], https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/tulpa [accessed on July 29th 2021]. See also S. Veissiere, ‘Varieties of Tulpa Experiences: The Hypnotic Nature of Human Sociality, Personhood, and Interphenomenality’, in: Hypnosis and Meditation: Towards an Integrative Science of Conscious Planes, ed. by A. Raz, M. Lifshitz, Oxford 2016.