Parallel Worlds

Virtual worlds are a medium of growing relevance in the artistic field, offering unique possibilities for creation and interaction. “Parallel Worlds” presents works developed on the Second Life and Open Simulator platforms, which are collaborative virtual environments. Fully immersive three-dimensional spaces where people interact with each other, and with the digital environment, through avatars.

This exhibition presents interactive environments based on these platforms, were the public can wander and explore, but also derivative works. That is, drawn from these virtual worlds, consisting of artistic practices that are extracted from this environment, but not necessarily constructions of these worlds. In this case machinimas, which is the name given to audiovisual pieces created from real-time captures in digital environments generated by three-dimensional rendering platforms. Thus, machinimas appropriate different spaces and avatars to tell new stories. Yet, artistic projects carried out in Second Life have an ephemeral and volatile nature. In most circumstances, it is not possible for authors to archive their work in its entirety, thus resorting to forms of registration that document their work or that of others. Capturing moving images on screen becomes a way of trying to register the spatiality and interactivity of these environments, as well as performative activities. However, these cannot be set as substitute for the artwork and do not replace the aesthetic experience in the virtual world. Machinimas derived from interactive artworks rather occupy two ambivalent places in aesthetic experience – on the one hand, they are triggering new aesthetic experiences and on the other they are the result of an aesthetic experience that has a creative dimension. They are the result of lines of flight between artworks and digital platforms, and in some cases between instances of the real (the virtual and the tangible). Although they present themselves in a specific medium, they are hybrid in their creative process. 

 

From the 24th of July to the 29th of August 2021 at the Estarreja Municipal House of Culture, as part of the Avanca Film Festival.

 

Artists:

Bryn Oh

CapCat Ragu

Elif Ayiter

Eupalinos Ugajin

Iono Allen

Livio Korobase

Meilo Minotaur

Morlita Quan

Silvestre Pestana

Theda Tammas

Tizzy Canucci AKA Tess Baxter

Tutsy Navarathna AKA Basile Vignes

Venus Adored