Anastasiia Vorobiova
Lemurian Time War, VR installation-experience: Virtual Reality, social media platform VRChat, running time: 30′
VR installation: Anastasiia Vorobiova (idea, text and digital realisation); creative team: Chris Ross-Ewart – a sound designer, En Lai Mah – dance & choreography, Pavel Mazur – AI-generated art, Inaaya Sophia Bocken – Polish-language voice, Laura Goodier – English-language voice
Vorobiova’s project ties in with her interest in activities and theories of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (British experimental cultural theorist collective), and their Writings 1997-2003. The artist claims that reading CCRU texts has boosted her logical grasp of information, affording a deeper sense of information operating on a number of cerebral activity levels. Vorobiova explores global digitisation, human entanglement in processes related thereto, shifts in perspective (anthropocentric to non-human), and revised mythologies.
The artist began developing the general project outline two years ago; approximately one month prior to the opening of the exhibition in Białystok, she proceeded to build a Lemurian Time War world on the VRChat platform, the origins of the name referencing the title of an essay describing Lemuria*, and included in Writings 1997-2003. Therein, CCRU “documents” traces of Lemurian occultism, connecting the dots of disparate stories by individuals who have encountered hidden relics of non-human intelligence. Vorobiova writes:
My focal point of fascination with the adventure arises from the fact that the deeper I delve into the concept, the higher the number of intriguing details I discover. Did you know that lemurs are primates, just like us humans? There are not that many species amongst the assorted branches primates are perched on in the animal kingdom. If we truly are simian siblings, the lemurs have chosen their own path, and there are no other primate species. Yet in all actuality, this project is all about a magical journey across a virtual world. The intent is to activate and experience magic.
Spectators will be offered the opportunity to become participants in a Virtual Reality ritual – a journey across points of tension and/or places of power in the Numogram – a Decimal Labyrinth sourced in CCRU theories. In creating her world, the artist has also referenced theories by Burroughs, Blavatsky, Crowley, Lovecraft, Jung and Gibson; she combines science fiction with elements of theosophy and futurology, psychoanalysis with mysticism. Vorobiova invites her audiences to embark upon a journey and experience the world through her – virtual – body, to “get under her skin”, as it were. The activity also indirectly assumes a meditative exploration of the self, the option made possible owing to the complex virtual world created by the artist.
* Lemuria – a continent which – according to a hypothesis by zoologist Philip Sclater (proposed in 1864, overturned in the early 20th century) – had existed, then sunk into the Indian Ocean. According to Darwinists, the hypothesis explained the isolation of lemurs on Madagascar, and the presence of their ancestors’ fossilised remains in Africa and south-eastern Asia. Lemuria is also mentioned by occultists and esoteric believers in theories regarding ostensible origins of mankind
Andrei Chodera-Isakau
Tardigrada. Micro/Macro Fundamental, 2023
VR / generative 3D simulation, Unreal Engine
sound (ambient) by Stefan Węgłowski
sound effects by Agata Chodera
The presented experiment (endless recording) is a gaming engine-based 3D simulation. Generated entities have been fitted with entry-level parameters determining their behaviour: seeking a partner/partners, preserving energy, developing metabolism, exploring the local terrain. Immanent community features include motion, nomadic forays and permanent hunger. Built in real time, the environment simulates boundless resources with the capacity to satisfy the needs of entity organisms. All creatures adapt to surroundings and conditions thanks to a sonar sense which helps them detect other individuals, necessary resources, and system interdependencies. Virtual beings simulate micro-organism behaviours with a dual purpose of surviving as long as possible, and forming relationships. Encoded growth instructions are copies, combined and processed with intent to create solid conditions for new populations. Once the simulation has been launched on opening night, all system-generating variables will be handled by algorithms.
The experiment has been based on a gaming engine and object-oriented programming. The simulation operates on a dual level: the installation displayed in gallery exhibition space, and a high-capacity broadband connection stream.
Tardigrada is a perfect match for reflections on self-reproduction and self-control of newly generated realms using data downloaded from the real world. All information is processed and converted for Virtual Reality purposes. The work is also a metapoetic narrative, describing the pleasures of observing microorganisms and their living processes. A method known to man for decades, microscope examination is expanded herein for purposes of following a complex grid of living, moving, interdependent “entities”.
The title Tardigrada alludes to tardigrades, invertebrates extraordinarily resilient to adverse natural conditions. They have ostensibly been the only ones to survive all mass extinctions on Earth.
Inexsistens
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.
Hubert Czerepok
The Beginning 3 (Karahan Tepe), 2017, three-channel video installation, 22′45″
Hubert Czerepok’s Beginning 3 is a three-channel production shot on an archaeological site in Karahan Tepe, Turkey, where the oldest place of cult (dated 10,000 B.C.) was discovered, which suggests that the area might have been the cradle of human settlement. Wall-joined megalithic pillars had been used to erect oval structures on site prior to the Neolithic Revolution, before the days of agriculture or animal husbandry. The civilisation capable of accomplishing the feat as yet remains unknown. Nobody knows who or why filled the sanctuary site with earth and gravel 1,500 years later. The artist explores a variety of theories regarding the extraordinary location, comparing the journey into the distant past to a trip to Mars, and referencing Andrey Tarkovsky’s Stalker.
The film narrative is delivered by three robots directly alluding to Tarkovsky’s characters: RED the Writer (man of art), NEXT the Professor (man of science), and MAG the Stalker, symbol of spirituality. Fiction blends in with science, the multitude of hypotheses and theories expanding our take on reality, complex and ambiguous, leaving the question regarding sources and origins wide open.
* Mars Rover similes built by students and teaching staff of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Białystok University of Technology were used in the video, the students and staff also present on set in Turkey.
Na podstawie: 16.09 – 19.11.2017. Hubert Czerepok. The Beginning, Zachęta – National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, https://zacheta.art.pl/en/wystawy/hubert-czerepok-poczatek?setlang=1.
Ernest Borowski
Covert, 2023, 3D animation, audio recording, song, 6′22″
musical cooperation / song performance: Zosia Hołubowska
Taking advantage of SF (speculative fabulation, speculative feminism, science fiction, scientific fact) tools, Ernest Borowski is projecting a vision of the world on the brink of an all-embracing collapse of life and system organisations as we know them – a world wherein the capitalist organisation of (over)production-based existence is bereft of all meaning.The narrative may be interpreted as imminent (in time), allowing an insight into co-sensibilities occurring just beyond our line of sight.
In his artistic practice, Borowski frequently references queering ecologies, examining ties between nature, biology and sexuality – and queer theory. Covert core pillars include a song prepared in collaboration with Zosia Hołubowska / Mala Herba, with interwoven motifs of labour criticism (in economic terms), queer closeness and inter-species tenderness – components of radical and speculative visions of the future. The artist expands his narrative to include more-than-human entities, inviting us to consider them a part of our queer family.
The Covert’s visual layer comprises a series of virtual micro-landscapes, local settlers more-than-human, imagery of existent and imagined species. Borowski embeds them in pre-renovation architecture of the Arsenal Gallery, formerly a power station (located in Bialystok, Poland), treating it as a source of memory, of modified data whose traces, while present, are well concealed. The artist believes that such images help accentuate the very essence of transformation occurring in human and non-human ecosystems.
Ernest Borowski
Interdisciplinary artist and researcher operating at the intersection of new media, sound, performance, and speculative narrative. Their work explores dispersed, multi-voiced identities and queer modes of existence that transcend linear models of subjectivity and production. They are interested in deconstructing established categories of identity and normative systems through forms of anti-productivity, fragmentation and interspecies relations. They employ speculative methods to imagine futures alternative to dominant narratives – futures in which bodies and technologies co-produce new forms of knowledge and ways of being.
Sebulec
Greetings Traveller, 2024
video, 5′
Wavy hair, shiny fur, muscular movement hypnotical and soft. Can a virtual being become an object of desire? Sebulec invites his audiences into a world combining the Skyrim game with the OnlyFans platform, Furry Animals whispering iconic NPC content for an ASMR effect. The artist seeks intimacy, relationships and poetry in generic phrases of welcome, invitation and/or threat gamers know so well. Using the Unreal Engine and Artificial Intelligence, the artist has created MetaPeople characters – hybrids we encounter in intimate 9:16 shot for-mat, experiencing their virtual materiality, fantasy patchworks extending beyond traditionally defined corporeality.
The author provokes questions concerning relationships between digital beings and people. Are they a mere implement designed to meet our needs? Will they take over our jobs and destroy our world? Or are we actually fantasising about becoming just like them, transcending the limitations of our own bodies?
Sebulec – studied at the Faculty of Graphic Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Showed his works i.a. at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, Museum of Warsaw, Krupa Gallery in Wrocław, and Central Museum of Textiles in Łódź. Creates digital and material objects, the latter using e.g. 3D printing, composites, textiles and silicone. Focuses on expressing queer identity in his artistic practice, seeking inspiration in the aesthetic of online fandoms, furry animal subculture, and video games. Creates ani-mations, digital companion characters, and avatars. Teaches at the 3D and Virtual Occur-rences II Studio of the Faculty of Media Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.
Eternal Engine (Martix Navrot & Jagoda Wójtowicz)
Unbelievable Geomagnetic Storm. Hyper-myth*, 2024
video, 7′30″
media: text, 3D, Unreal Engine, Python, Sound, Remix
A massive geomagnetic storm has been raging across Earth for a few days, the phenomenon caused by solar wind impacting the Earth’s magnetosphere – our planet’s magnetic field. It usually coincides with powerful solar eruptions referred to as coronal mass ejections, resulting in huge volumes of charged particles reaching the Earth. These particles disrupt the Earth’s magnetic field. Most commonly, they cause no major failure or damage, their presence indicated by the appearance of the aurora borealis – yet more powerful ejections can harm electronic devices and shut them down, in extreme cases disrupting entire infrastructure systems.
This time, our Sun’s activity has reached the maximum, confirming speculations regarding its destructive impact on human technologies.
Electronic appliances and monitoring systems are malfunctioning. Luxury automobiles are mutinous. Royal Servers have been destabilised. Changes to the terrestrial electromagnetic field may affect our inner electromagnetic field…
Believers in the destructive and hallucinogenic force of the phenomenon, the Court Jester and Empress of Time Extinct have recognised it as the long-awaited opportunity to rebel against the rule of the King and Queen of the Immortal Castle. In order to reach the Castle, they will have to travel the Unending Highway, facing their own imaginings, and desires born of the new systems.
* Hyper-myth / hyper-legend – a term coined by the Eternal Engine duo to describe the new model of mythology which gives rise to new archetypes rooted in current technological, environmental, and social phenomena.
** Immortal Castle – image of a monumental hyper-mythical system, where the King and Queen, the Castle’s perpetual guardians, are in charge of their digital kingdom, where capitalism is eternal, incited by the logic of profit and domination. The vision is one of a self-propelled chain of corporations united in a pervasive structure – a system seemingly without beginning or end, our mentality confined within its own borders..
Eternal Engine – multidisciplinary queer artistic duo formed by Jagoda Wójtowicz (she/her) and Martix Navrot (they/them, he/him). Martix Navrot (official ID name: Marta Anna Nawrot) is a programmer, poet, and audio and virtual experience artist. Graduated with a master’s degree from the Archisphere Studio, Faculty of Intermedia of the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. Participated in the Erasmus Exchange Programme at the Glasgow School of Art, Interaction Design programme. Assisted Piotr Kopik at the 3D and Virtual Occurrences I Studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in the years 2020-2023. Jagoda Wójtowicz is a multidisciplinary artist, 3D designer, gaming experience author, and audio artist. Graduated with a master’s degree from the Archisphere Studio, Faculty of Intermedia of the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. Former (2021) head of the New Media Studio at the Faculty of Stage Design of the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. The duo have been collaborating for 6 years, engaging in speculative narratives regarding technological acceleration trajectories, technomysticism, parascience theories, post-labour, and the quantum future and psychedelic present. In their artistic practice, they critically investigate the domination of big tech corporations, analysing alternative technological development paths through the lens of storytelling, worldbuilding, and radical imagination. Every project authored by the duo involves a speculative multidisciplinary narrative with a post-real imagery focus, basing either on new media (i.a. VR, AR, AI, 3D, video, sonic fiction, creative coding) or on textual content, sculpture and space. Eternal Engine have shown their works i.a. at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Morris Gallery in collaboration with Tate Liverpool, BFI London, Krupa Art Foundation in Wrocław, Skala Gallery Poznań, HOS Gallery in Warsaw, Import Export gallery in Warsaw and Slug Art Gallery in Leipzig, at the Unsound Festival in Cracow, and many others. In 2022, the duo took part in the Unseen Futures art residency organised by Abandon Normal Devices in Manchester, and targeting queer female digital artists. That was also the year of Eternal Engine making the European Change Makers 2022 list published annually by Creative Europe.
photo: Adam Gut
