Film&Design Nights #5 (H&D edition): 3DPD
3DPD (“three-dimensional pig disgusting”) was a kind of meeting code for net friends, who were inhabiting inside the two-dimensional glowing screens, gathering in the real world. When Internet was still the outlaw from “real life”. Now the boundaries between 2D and 3D have blurred to the point that we can no longer tell the distinctions between the real and the virtual, at least not by dissecting pixels and dust. Being on or off the grid is no longer just a switch between the digital and the physical, but an entangled trans(bio-)political issue.
French artist Juliette Lizotte came from the generation that the Japanese pop culture took over the world. The aesthetic of Otaku culture (Japanese obsessive tech/game/manga/animation fan culture) became part of her thinking before she knew it. For her, the Otaku aesthetic was not only fun, but signifying a form of liberation. Like many subcultures, Otaku isolates themselves from the "real world" and create their own reality. Following this logic, Lizotte juxtaposes her local food fantasy with the Otaku aesthetic and propose an alternative world, as if local food consumption is somewhat 2D, since the 3D mass production of food is disgusing.
A TRIPTYCH FANTASY ON LOCAL FOOD by Juliette Lizotte (full version)
The curious part of Lizotte's work is the gamification of green food consumerism. A video game of Whole Food. It suggested an anti-capitalism biopolitical movement has to be as possessive and popular as the subject it opposes. Or even, look exactly like its opponent. It's a war for attention after all. Libido and pleasure are the driving force. And the content, not longer dictates the form.
A Death Note (manga&animation series) meme expose "the daily dilemma" of Otakus: sleep or next episode? Similarly, Netflix claims sleep is its only real enemy. Digital media companies thrived by exploiting our attention mechanism and keep us sweeping. Willingly or not, we are made to live like Otaku by the omnipresent mega-infrastructure we are living now make us all live like Otakus. So looking into how Otaku lives, perhaps through our eyes in ten years ago, will give us an idea about our lives in the next ten years. When watching Akihabara Geeks, I'd like to invite you to not taking what you see literally, but thinking how much it has been informing our current lives. In another word, looking at our future from the past.
Akihabara Geeks (full version)
For the inhabitants of the 2D world, visual representation is everything but also is secondary. Visual clues are sets of gadgets that are waiting to be assembled into likable characters one after another. Similarly, our social network encourages us to share our life in formatted bits, so that we can also be appreciated by modular emotions: like, love, haha, cry and angry. For cooperate companies, the visual formulas are only about efficiency. The efficiency for the user to express without second thoughts, the efficiency for the companies to collect user data and stimulate user desires. For a lot of Otaku, it's ok to be compartmentalized their desire into electronic parts, as long as they are being reassembled in the right ways. It is not the fact that matters, but the reassembled truth.
However, the conversion between the 2D and the 3D lose the sensory continuum and turn users into distorted avatars. Swiss designer Simone Niqullie explored how our identities were made obscure by the media and the medium, and eventually, our life no longer has a clear distinction between the real and virtual, right and wrong, or you and me. All of these, become liquid beings that are drifting in an in-between space.
The Fragility of Life by Simone C. Niqullie (trailer)