Upcoming MetaGarden show
Getting ready for the upcoming show at DUM Project Space! Join us this Wednesday IRL or online starting at 19:00. Many thanks to Metaja Bucar and Vadim Fishikin (DUM Project Space / DUM Association of Artists) for co-production of this exhibition, and Maja Ciric for curating and consulting! Also Jan Kusej for helping me with the executive production, Justin M. aka “Pudding” for helping me with optimizing initial VRChat club, Saša Radić for providing his amazing tracks for the Genesis AV set, Vid Podpečan from Department of Knowledge Technologies at Jožef Stefan Institute and our SciArtLab for work on neural networks, Prof. George Poinar for sending information about the plants he has discovered in amber, Thimster for the modeling of those two plants, Kristina Bukač, Jelena Guga, Ivan Stanić, Derek Snyder for consulting, and all friends from VRChat and Sansar, I could not do it without you!
About the show: “MetaGarden Sphere4 by Tanja Vujinovic is a hybrid negotiation between the physical gallery and virtual worlds, in which real art objects are mixed with the digital UXA (user experience of art). They all belong to the artist’s user-created worlds – advanced virtual environments – in Sansar, VRChat and other digital infrastructures as original examples of contemporary art of the metaverse (meta + universe) in 2021. They consist of exemplary, luminous worlds called Love, Genesis and Club and are inhabited by joyful avatars.The virtual club and garden enable us to explore virtual reality through new forms of phygital (physical + digital) collectivity and playful modes of making and sharing based on human-computer interaction and a deeper integration with artistic production processes. These virtual environments act as original platforms for special events scheduled by the hosts. Most often, they feature a minimal techno audio-visual set and not only invite users for a classical walk-through but also to unique free-aligned, one-off interactions. Besides being inhabited by digital beings, these worlds also host generated Dyson Sphere-like devices, various biomimetic objects of snake and plant-inspired forms, and reconstructed plants from the Earth's past, representing Synthetic Others in the now. Informed by scientific research methodology, Tanja Vujinović has cultivated the MetaGarden Sphere4 by creating digital twins of several plants from the Earth's past: Strychnos electri – a poisonous flower, four Carboniferous plants (Psaronis, Calamites, Kordait, Sphenophyllum) and Chenocebus allodapus – a flower modelled after what is possibly the very first flower to blossom on Earth. Strychnos electri and Chenocebus allodapus were studied by George Poinar, one of the world's experts on plant and animal life forms preserved in amber. Alluring and essential for human survival, the first flowers may have existed up to 100 million years ago, and while many paleobotanists work on the puzzle of how the first flowers looked, the artist cultivates their Synthetic versions in the metaverse. With Chenocybus allodapus representing one of the earliest angiosperm lineages known, Strychnos electri belongs to the family of highly poisonous plants that, together with snake-like objects in Sphere4, creates twisted instances of Asclepius rods alluding to the medicine-poison dichotomy. In the MetaGarden orchids are nurtured as the most seductive and diverse flowers while the Dyson sphere-inspired objects float, encircling stars and capturing their energy to be used in this world. As new spheres of MetaGarden unfold, we can observe their elements and how entities form lives of their own. As Félix Guattari puts it, “its chaosmic Universe can be constellated with […], vegetal, animal, cosmic or machinic...becomings.”Tanja Vujinović is an artist who creates UXA by using the art-adjacent field of gaming. The artist’s metaverse as a unique ecosystem emerges from a bottom-up culture rather than from a top-down industrial model and is open to be discovered and inhabited by new users. MetaGarden Sphere4 is placed within Sansar and VRChat, a popular alternative social construct manifested as an expressive amalgam of a computer game and a social platform that offers possibilities of organizing events for avatars and publishing content in the form of virtual worlds. Sansar and VRChat could also be described as a “Non-game game”, a class of software offering the player unbound possibilities of freeform play, non-binary identity and a great degree of self-expression, exploration and interaction, without the limits of conventional or imposed goals and objectives. DUM project space is in this case more than a host: it is a facilitator for vast technological and hybrid alternative worlds constructed by Tanja Vujinović in the metaverse. Currently displayed is also the exhibition MetaGarden Chronicles 1, the first exhibition at Ultramono LABS ¯`*•.¸,¤°gallery°¤,¸.•*´¯ by Tanja Vujinović, curated by Maja Ćirić, in the new space for exhibitions and related events – Ultramono LABS ¯`*•.¸,¤°gallery°¤,¸.•*´¯ world published on the VRChat platform. LINK
Credits:
MetaGarden Sphere4
Digital images, VRChat/Sansar worlds, custom software (colour, sound), computers, screens or projectors;
Sansar link to world MetaGarden Club 2.0:
LINK https://atlas.sansar.com/experiences/tanjav-2058/highlands-template
VRChat link to world MetaGarden Sphere4 Club
https://vrch.at/wrld_57549801-1add-4bb4-a017-bd6d2c4a5e50
VRChat link to world MetaGarden Sphere4 Daylite Club
https://vrch.at/wrld_5561d855-6a5b-4805-a59d-03631b8b63c3
VRChat link to world MetaGarden Sphere4 Love at the Edge of the Playspace
https://vrch.at/wrld_75c0752b-7325-42ef-9cf3-992b2591bf6a
VRChat link to world MetaGarden Sphere4 Genesis
https://vrch.at/wrld_f2e1b77b-1996-4f3e-b259-0a8ca0458139
VRChat link to world MetaGarden Ultramono LABS gallery
https://vrch.at/wrld_eb9aa7dc-1e43-4950-bc49-b57851e7b7ff
3D modelling, Unity3D world building, sound: Tanja Vujinović
3D objects of carboniferous plants: Dariusz Andrulonis for edukator.pl
Chenocebus allodapus and Strychnos electri plant 3D object modeling: Thimster, Graphics Design Master
Unity3D world building: Tanja Vujinović
Unity3D world optimization: Justin M. aka “Pudding”
Sphere4 Club ₲Ɇ₦Ɇ₴ł₴ AV set: Tanja Vujinović (visual material from Universal Objects and MetaGarden series) and Saša Radić (sound); Tracks: Jackal, B3, Mind Drive, Vertical, Push it, Rolling 3.0, Never Ending Story (published by Vozotonik Records, Triple Vision Record Distribution / Smashed Records. Proton Distribution)
Training of deep neural network: dr Vid Podpečan, Department of Knowledge Technologies, Jožef Stefan Institute
Coproduction: SciArtLab, Jožef Stefan Institute
Coproduction:DUM Association of Artists
Production: Ultramono, 2021
Consulting: Maja Ćirić, curator and art critic; Kristina Bukač, Informatics Engineer; Prof. George Poinar, College of Science at Oregon State University; Dr. Jelena Guga, Researcher; Thimster, Graphics Design Master; Dr. Vid Podpečan, Department of Knowledge Technologies, Jožef Stefan Institute; Ivan Stanić, Curator and Artist; Derek Snyder, Researcher and Editor; friends from VRChat.
Project is supported by the Department for Culture of the Municipality of Ljubljana, and The Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia.
🐍🌺🌞• 👽 •💮🐉
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