Unfinished worlds: What would happen if the worlds we construct don't present a totalitarian idea of what a world is?
These worlds are speculative places, spaces for research and interpretations.
This week’s lecture and discussion with Rachel Falconer brought some unexpectedly interesting ideas. Unexpected because I am fairly skeptical about the concept of extended reality. This is possibly partly due to my lack of knowledge of the field and its particular interests explored through various creative lenses. My practice was always “analogue” - deeply rooted in embodiment and physical presence, in ‘being here’ - experiencing worlds first hand. But perhaps I was not thinking far enough when thinking about extended realities.
There were two particular artworks Rachel showed during her lecture which made a powerful impact on my perception of this creative technological field. The first of the two was a performative multi-player VR installation SYMBIOSIS by the Dutch experience design collective POLYMORF. The multi-sensory / multi-media nature of the work, its conceptual framework and the way this in fittingly translated into the final experience makes for a wholesome speculative tour-de-force in post-Anthropocentric world-making.
The second work that left its mark was Jakob Kudsk Steensen’s VR piece AQUAPHOBIA which explores the speculative - yet possibly inevitable - transformations of landscapes as a product of climate change. The visually arresting digital reconstruction of Louis Valentino Jr. Park and Pier in Redhook, Brooklyn is created by combining “past and future geological periods” and accompanied by a dystopian narrative recited by a “morphing aquatic entity” following the user as they explore this dark, fascinating, part-inviting, part-hostile world of tomorrow.
Both of these projects have a very specific quality that I was sceptical exists within the current field of extended realities. Symbiosis and Aquaphobia are touching, sensual, visceral, feral - they both extended towards the non-human and imagine possibilities. Both are proud of their speculative uncanniness, even the unease that emerges as their (by-)product.
Perhaps precisely this unease plays an important role in invoking a more acute awareness of the problem in question. Rather than rational knowing, the knowledge becomes felt - knowing by feeling. In fact, Steensen’s Aquaphobia directly uses the fear of water “as an entry point to transform perceptions of our relationship to future water levels and climates”.
As a little side note, I would also like to post this video of Resurrection Lands, a playable virtual experience exploring trans blackness and its specters by Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley. I am only including this work marginally as it doesn’t directly concern my practice but I still find it fascinating and very important.
