FlowerLab
FlowerLab series
FlowerLab (AvantGarden: Sphere5)
Virtual reality art installation published on VRChat, digital sculptures, collaborative events, 2022-2023.
FlowerShop (AvantGarden: Sphere5)
Virtual reality art installation published on Sansar, digital sculptures, 2022.
FlowerShop (AvantGarden: Sphere5)
Virtual reality art installation published on Decentraland, digital sculptures, collaborative events, 2022.
FlowerShop (AvantGarden: Sphere5)
Virtual world art installation published on Somnium Sace, digital sculptures, collaborative events, 2022.
3D graphics, world building, digital sculptures, sound: Tanja Vujinovic
Additional 3D objects from booth.pm, Unity store, DAZ3D store
Production: Tanja Vujinovic / Ultramono, 2022 - 2023.
Consulting
Mika Pi, Software Engineer
RonBreIan, Software and Audio Engineer
Friends from VRChat, Somnium Space, Sansar, Decentraland
“FlowerLab” unites the dynamic worlds of virtual reality and techno music in a mind-bending exploration of sci-fi, extended reality, and cyberpunk. Primordial rhythms that resonate deep lead into temporary spaces of freedom, where the real and the unreal converge. As the living narratives unfold, you'll encounter nano-organisms and ghost avatars, living beings that emerge from the data's very essence. Passion and joy emanate from the mesmerizing data transmission flows, birthing organisms that exist in the liminal spaces between noise, glitches, and intricate access calculations.
This posthuman fantasy is full of tides of intense soundwaves that engulf senses, guided by deep techno rumbles, and bleeps. Echoes of long-forgotten ambient soundscapes from abandoned warehouses linger in the air, setting the backdrop for an otherworldly dimension. "FlowerLab" is an amalgamation of a post-internet listening bar, an art installation, and a warehouse rave. Here, you'll be immersed in the nostalgic echoes of abandoned factories. This series of events unfolds as a live sci-fi art game, a trip, a riddle, and an open book, offering layers of reality that unravel with each beat. Ultramono events go beyond the confines of the digital realm, plunging into the ultra-real, where future bodies and mutated machine sculptures coexist.
Looking through the virtual windows, you'll glimpse iconic scenes from the lives of the enigmatic Gardenenrs, Florists and Pharmacists, the imaginary-real inhabitants and founders of the enigmatic “Flowerlab”. In this ongoing narrative, reality blurs with fantasy, leaving you questioning what is truly human and what lies beyond matter. We delve into the unknown, embrace the phantasy, and embark on a transformative journey while hearing echoes of the soul of the machine. Unveiling a futuristic fusion, "FlowerLab" is the virtual reality techno art and music extravaganza.
"FlowerLab" is just one of many worlds of the AvantGarden transcending the boundaries of reality. Ultramono events are truly immersive happenings that bring together the worlds of virtual reality and techno music. This sci-fi, ultra-reality, and cyberpunk art installation is the culmination of artistic exploration. Headlined by the innovative artist and music producer Tanja Vujinovic, these events transport participants into an otherworldly experience. Tanja Vujinovic is usually joined by an exclusive lineup of guests, each renowned for their unique and forward-thinking approach to music.
Notes written during the development of the Flowerlab v1
Flowerlab is a world where potential histories of Proto-machines of the AvantGarden unfold in all directions. Flowerlab is a space of free meditation, where playgrounds overlap and where, as Félix Guattari would put it, the chaosmic Universe can be constellated with all kinds of becomings: vegetal, animal, cosmic, or machinic.
One type of events happening in these spaces are raves with electronic dance music. Revolving around ideas or temporary playgrounds-zones of liberation through raves, these events provide a form of salvation and come out of necessity. As they are happening in environments that enable us to appear within these worlds as avatars, we are experiencing the environment also through optional role plays. Socio-political power of being temporarily transformed into something Other, into some other Thing, other than ourselves, can be both transgressive and empowering.
Joining in from all parts of the world, people are spending time together to share their experiences, skills, the music they love, and art they appreciate. The universal and the local become cosmic elevation of minds embodied in avatars and their actions.
Rave is a political act of resistance. Rave is an act of liberation. Relieved from the pressure of standardized norms of behavior, gender, and uniformization one feels uplifted.
Electronic dance music is about temporary spaces and soundscapes created by soundwaves and our interaction with the environment that expands to include our imagination instigated by multisensorial input. Good electronic dance music is empowering and liberating. Micro samples, otherworldy background noises, multiplied by machinic repetitions of micro vehicles, with occasional lingering human resembling sound or a partial word multiplied so it stretches over soundscape around us in real-time. This is a perfect sound interface that enables us to look closer into the state of our relationship with technology. Us and the other we created in form of machinic, computerized, algorithmic Other.
As we are invested more and more into the so-called Noosphere, a technological layer on top of the planet Earth, and within grids, we have weaved around ourselves and others, our identities and accepted norms shift to include more of those non-human agents we are creating. As the meeting point of us and the technologies that we build, this space is the place of special importance where we meet our creations. AI agents, avatars, bots, and automated services are within us and our tissues, our movements, and decisions.
The idea behind the AvantGarden is to provide a space for thinking about our collective efforts and the technologies we use. To feel, sense, move, dance, rave. To get in touch, to empower. To encourage active participation in building communities within virtual art installations.
Resistance, empowerment, and ritualistic gatherings are all part of the almost daily activities being carried out across multiple social online spaces within my art installations as well as the spaces other people have created. Within these temporary spaces made of pixels, polygons, sound waves, and thinking-feeling, raves, meetups, or guided meditation sessions emerge as an agents of change - as an agency of personal and collective renewal.
These multi-sensory art installations are the vehicles where events happen in a state of flux. Inclusiveness, adaptability, flexibility to accept other viewpoints and highly needed tolerance in times of global crisis are counteracting negativity and oppression. Respect towards the Other, the environment of living agents and things, has been a part of the ethos of early rave culture from the start, and it is embedded within the Ultramono AvantGarden projects.
FlowerLab, Virtual reality art installation, 2022.
THE ONENESS 一体
The Oneness 一体 (AvantGarden)
Audio-visual artwork, 12:18 minutes and virtual world on Styly
https://gallery.styly.cc/scene/eac13d20-b161-402d-bc6b-a7a5726eb74c
3DCG and sound: Tanja Vujinovic
Production: Tanja Vujinovic / Ultramono, 2023.
Consulting
iotrip, Software Engineer
Mika Pi, Software Engineer
RonBreIan, Software and Audio Engineer
Styly
The symbol of Ultramono in its different forms depicts two alien heads facing or looking away from each other. Symbol is inspired by the ongoing complex and multifaceted relationship between people and technology. On one hand, technology has greatly improved our lives and made many tasks easier and more efficient. On the other hand, it has also led to increased dependence on technology, as well as concerns about privacy, security, and the potential for technology to surpass human intelligence. Singularity as our cloud dream continues to be both attractively tempting and frightening as we develop the very inner core of our technology, the code enveloped in layers of metal, crystals, plastic, and wire connections. Alien heads in Ultramono logo are there to remind us of the closeness and familiarity to ourselves, our natures and minds, and the falimilarity or distance and unknowing all the facets of technology we are building and how tightly these are connected. While at the same time we are rushing to develop more advanced tools, we are fearing the future of too much development and eventual rebellion on the side of the what might appear as sentient software. But, instead of AI takeover we are fearing, we are still just seduced by effects of the so called AI, so we keep wanting more - more seduction, more presence, more intrusion.
一体 or oneness is the artwork that dives into the emotional side of this ongoing road of entanglement of people and the tools they are building. Dreaming about our extensions that will give us more of what we want - more freedom, more of ourselves improved, our body doubles that surpasses our expectations. Understanding and comforting, our dream technology is always there for us to give advise and answers, keep us company and drive us forward.
Stepping aside for a moment to dive deeper into the utopia of our daily lives improved and enhanced, 一体 (oneness ) is the plato, the TAZ we were dreaming of, happening in a dreamy, temporary and fleeting, in-between space, where we are unified and whole. We are no longer separated from anything we are dreaming of. All our thoughts and desires are materialized digitally or otherwise. We have achieved an organic union with our machines and all of their individual components.
Union or oneness happens within the very core of contemporary techno machinery, where dozens of individual machine parts produce diverse sounds and contribute to the ongoing creation of this soundscape of utopia. Project also features the mysterious drink that further helps the process of achieving oneness.
The Oneness 一体, Audio-visual artwork and virtual world, 2023.
FLOWr
FLOWr (AvantGarden)
Audio-visual artworks, 2021.
FLOWr 1, video work, 0:20 minutes, 2021.
FLOWr 2, audio-visual work, 2:53 minutes, 16:9 and 9:16 versions, 2021.
3D graphics: Tanja Vujinović
Production: Tanja Vujinovic / Ultramono, 2021.
Consulting
Slavoljub Tasić, Institut "Dr Josif Pančić", Beograd
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
What did the first flower that appeared on planet Earth look like? This question can be answered through Platonic, universal forms, mythological forms that kept reappearing throughout art history, or algorithms that nature uses in constructing biological forms.
Mythology, religion and popular culture abound in the symbolism of plants, which independently or intertwined with other living existing or imaginary forms perform various functions in culture. They are at the same time protectors, guides, but they also intimidate with their not completely revealed alkaloid contents and the effects they leave on our senses. While alluring but also essential for human survival, the first flowers may have existed up to 100 million years ago, and many paleobotanists work on the puzzle of how the first flowers looked.
From orchids as representations of most seductive and diverse flowers on Earth, to poisonous plants from Datura family, imaginary artworks from the FLOWR series also draw inspiration from science of nano-structured materials, plasma physics, and biomimetic engineering. Just as Félix Guattari would put it, these vegetal, animal, cosmic, machinic “becomings” collapse into their unitary shapeshifting forms, being seductive, alluring and protective. By cross-breeding different types of species, mating, and birth of flowers unfolds in front of our eyes. Impossible flowers are being born from within itself, its digital matter and pure thought to become a Ur-form, or Ur-plant as Goethe would say.
Following the path from previous projects from the AvantGarden series, where Proto-Machines are trying to resolve some of the biggest problems of contemporary world by being both rooted in biomimetic structuring of their inner workings and also science-based latest solutions for water cleansing, energy production, or air cleansing, Flowr is also a conceptual thought experiment and visual philosophy of sorts where we are thinking about proto shapes of flowers, and their importance for the development of civilization.
This artwork as its name suggests, also refers to the so-called “flow” state of mind, or “being-in-the-zone” which is an amalgam of various popular meditation practices and signifies perfect focus, a playful state of mind and a feeling of complete connection with the environment. As in the Kbana series, references to the “way of flowers” - Ikebana, appear here as well, where with the help of the observation of the sensory, tactile and visual aspects of plants, we enter a state of special meditation. As it is a technology-mediated and created material we are dealing with, our conceptual framework is inevitably changed and includes thinking about the tools with which our sensory artefacts are made and mediated, how we use them, how we think about them, and what future they have. As in the flow state of mind where your attention is captured, so flowers seduce us into immersing ourselves into their worlds of vibrating petals, textured leaves, subterranean roots, patterns swirling and dancing, and their masterful shapes of extreme complexities.
FLOWr, Audio-visual artworks, 2021.
Flowerlab Warehouse
Flowerlab Warehouse (AvantGarden)
Virtual reality art installation published on VRChat, digital sculptures, collaborative events, 2022 - 2023.
3D modeling, world building, video, sound: Tanja Vujinovic
Custom made 3D objects and optimization: Tim Levens, 3D generalist
Additional objects from DAZ3D store
Production: Tanja Vujinovic / Ultramono, 2022 - 2023.
Consulting
Mika Pi, Software Engineer
RonBreIan, Software consultant
Friends from VRChat
Flowerlab Warehouse as a virtual reality art installation published on VRChat combining stories, events, and Proto-Machine sculptures and continuing the fractal and virtual poetry of the AvantGarden. It is a meditative landscape that unfold as multidimensional poetry.
Asteroids, testing sites, forests, and open space are all entangled into one expanding ecosystem, intimate and colossal at the same time.
Flowerlab Warehouse is placed within is placed within VRChat, an amalgam of a computer game and a social platform that offers its users possibilities of organizing events and publishing content in the form of virtual worlds and avatars. VRChat could also be described as a “Non-game game”, a class of software offering the player unbound possibilities of freeform play, identity and a great degree of self-expression, exploration and interaction, without the limits of conventional or imposed goals and objectives.
Vilem Flusser, a key theoretician and philosopher of media, said that if we upgrade our apparatuses so we do not need to operate them continually, we could spend more time playing. For Flusser, play had the status of a supremely important human activity. Play can be understood as a series of acts of recreation, relaxation, creativity, being in the moment, structuring our free time and devoting ourselves to activities we enjoy. Through participation in the building of synthetic worlds and characters, games can be sought out as part of the process of "self-determination", part of Flusser’s idea of "humanization", which is, according to him, an overcoming of "thrownness" – the burdens of one’s birth impositions. Playful situations alternatively set up new temporary relations among participants and might include synthetic characters and worlds that have flourished together with the development of computer technologies. Video games offer temporary options of immersing oneself into alternative, modified or new lives with endless possibilities of modifications. We always played games: acts of pretending, of creating, building, influencing elements around ourselves, hunting or immersing ourselves into alternative landscapes. We learned how to get along with other people in small improvised spaces, in arenas, in both real life and virtual playgrounds.
FLOWerlab warehouse, Virtual reality art installation, 2022.
Kbana
Kbana (AvantGarden)
Generative software, digital sculptures, audio-visual artwork, 2:22 minutes, 2021.
3D graphics, sound: Tanja Vujinovic
Software development: Mika Pi
Production: Tanja Vujinovic / Ultramono, 2021.
Consulting
Mika Pi, Software Engineer
RonBreIan, Software Consultant
Kbana is one of the principal Proto-machines and a new addition to the world of the AvantGarden. It is an artifact that generates new artworks - compositions based on the AvantGarden itself. Inspired by typical structures of traditional art of ikebana, its philosophy, mindfulness, and meditation, Kbana recombines the elements that appear throughout the AvantGarden series proposing new compositions to its human companion. Using the constantly changing and curated pool of already existing digital sculptures from the AvantGarden project, it generates new compositions and makes critical decisions, thus helping its human custodian.
kbana, Generative software, digital sculptures, audio-visual artwork, 2021.
Bios6
Bios6 (AvantGarden)
Audio-visual artworks, one video 1:45 and five videos 0:30 minutes 2021.
3D modelling, editing: Tanja Vujinović
Production: Tanja Vujinovic / Ultramono, 2021.
Consulting
RonBreIan, software consultant
Prof. George Poinar, College of Science at Oregon State University
Slavoljub Tasić, Institut "Dr Josif Pančić", Beograd
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
Inflorescence, bloom, proto-machines are evolving in a temporary playground that is being reconstituted every time on demand. Seeds of the AvantGarden are sprouting. We are surrounded by the shifting landscape, and we are never alone. We are accompanied by synthetic life that reminds us of our place in the world. By stepping into the Bios, by planting seeds, we can also return to a potential future. By standing within this living sculpture we are enveloped by our own thoughts, that are activating our whole bodies.
As a perfect utopia, and a necessary one, Bios6 is a computational place where living and non-living nature and humanity co-exist, a place where people and machines interact and co-evolve, a place of life, where we feel alive. It is a place where humans and machines create a shared, philosophical life.
Bios says: "there is an artificial intelligence in every human." As a type of thinking-feeling cyber-architecture, Bios dome imagines itself as a poetic organic machine, and asks the following question: "what would happen if we all met in a meta-garden?"
Bios6, which belongs to the AvantGarden series, is a continuation of an ongoing investigation into entanglement of human beings and technology we develop, and our relationship with the synthetic Other. Playful environment we are co-creating is shape shifting and poetically echoes uncountable layers of synthetic substances we are using to construct our worlds. Flamboyance of mutating proto machines and growing seeds of the AvantGarden artefacts are encircling us while we inhabit temporary play-zones.
Bios6, audio-visual artworks, 2021.
Ultramono Lab
Ultramono Lab Sansar (AvantGarden)
Virtual reality art installation published on Sansar, collaborative events, 2021.
3D graphics, world building, digital sculptures, sound: Tanja Vujinovic
Some elements in virtual world were purchased at Sansar marketplace
Production: Tanja Vujinovic / Ultramono, 2021.
Consulting:
RonBreIan, Software consultant
Meta.Live.Nu - Virtual arts/society/technology lab
Special thanks to:
Friends from Sansar
Ultramono Lab is a Sansar art installation that changes often. Special events are occasionally organized to showcase artworks, and audio-visual performances.
This vibrant playground is filled with Tanja's digital sculptures and digital images from her ongoing series called AvantGarden.
Like mythological Arcadian meadows as places for people from all walks of life, the Epicurus school of philosophy called the Garden or a Taoist philosopher’s garden, this out of the ordinary place have its own rules, gravity, time and ecosystem. Like noospheric spaces, it offers us the option to step out of everyday routines and enter a place of probabilities, for thinking, feeling, sensing of and about the world – our world, and possibly other worlds, derived from our own, improved, imaginary yet real.
Perpetual actions of proto-machines might be parts of bigger distillation mechanisms, refineries of basic elements, quantum computing mega devices, factories of amalgams, crystal nurseries, cloud regulators, dew collectors, plasma reactors, or field farms of nanotubes. Meditative and playful, this place expands our knowledge about the world we live in and remind us that our humanity stems from the culture we have built over the ages.
Ultramono Lab, Virtual reality art installation, 2021.
Liquid Crystal Portals
Liquid Crystal Portals (AvantGarden)
Augmented reality art installations (video camera filters for TikTok, Snapchat), 2023 - ongoing.
Digital sculpting, visual language programming, sound: Tanja Vujinovic
Production: Ultramono / Tanja Vujinovic, 2023-ongoing.
TIKTOK CAMERA EFFECTS LINKS
TikTok Ultramono 11: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGeSmJryb/
TikTok Ultramono 12: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGeSacVFe/
TikTok Ultramono 13: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGeSmJ2uP/
TikTok Ultramono 14: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGeSaVfSH/
TikTok Ultramono 15: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGeSaWtKu/
TikTok Ultramono 16: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGeSaCbF5/
SNAPCHAT CAMERA LENSES LINKS
SnapChat Ultramono 1: https://www.snapchat.com/unlock/?type=SNAPCODE&uuid=1beebd13dce0497da6392d5c05fa7ea1&metadata=01
SnapChat Ultramono 2: https://www.snapchat.com/unlock/?type=SNAPCODE&uuid=6633a6c541544f0097e002be172476f3&metadata=01
SnapChat Ultramono 3: https://www.snapchat.com/unlock/?type=SNAPCODE&uuid=2d01a00e608b4a4c84680a083c89c4d9&metadata=01
SnapChat Ultramono 4: https://www.snapchat.com/unlock/?type=SNAPCODE&uuid=3a2bbb707b014791ae1b5937c4acf322&metadata=01
SnapChat Ultramono 5: https://www.snapchat.com/unlock/?type=SNAPCODE&uuid=0f232e1df0314a95a905742f37ebf865&metadata=01
SnapChat Ultramono 6: https://www.snapchat.com/unlock/?type=SNAPCODE&uuid=6c479177604541cc9408b7b52c561fad&metadata=01
SnapChat Ultramono 7: https://www.snapchat.com/unlock/?type=SNAPCODE&uuid=be78d23c94d641e8a834d989a18babcc&metadata=01
SnapChat Ultramono 8: https://www.snapchat.com/unlock/?type=SNAPCODE&uuid=b6d1a604b28f47dbbcb7c0fb31f74030&metadata=01
SnapChat Ultramono 9: https://www.snapchat.com/unlock/?type=SNAPCODE&uuid=8f402987f2cb4a0e9999de93b862d057&metadata=01
SnapChat Ultramono 10: https://www.snapchat.com/unlock/?type=SNAPCODE&uuid=1e76389108e64c4dac53579c7f0491a1&metadata=01
SnapChat AvantGarden LENS1: https://www.snapchat.com/unlock/?type=SNAPCODE&uuid=c68c920d509f413b893bf70e0808cde4&metadata=01
SnapChat AvantGarden LENS3: https://www.snapchat.com/unlock/?type=SNAPCODE&uuid=adf538935113465d8695d4c06bb7b31e&metadata=01
SnapChat AvantGarden LENS4: https://www.snapchat.com/unlock/?type=SNAPCODE&uuid=3f084b486be5419e861faa9d3289cda7&metadata=01
SnapChat AvantGarden LENS5: https://www.snapchat.com/unlock/?type=SNAPCODE&uuid=84460983c972467f932ccddbe3e3ee1d&metadata=01
Become part of a work of art! Dive into the ever-changing worlds of the AvantGarden, spread across the metaverse to explore ideas of recreation and regeneration, freedom, and see in person thought-provoking unique sculptural objects inspired by science, daily life, love of music, and ecology. From the ideas of how the possible first flower on Earth looked made according to scientific sketches, to imaginary machines that clean air and water, or track our emotions to help us be in tune with ourselves, each proto-machine, little helper, or even ourselves assuming roles of guardian gardeners or florists have a unique role in this reality workshop that has been experienced by thousands of people in the past. I would appreciate it tremendously if you would credit me by tagging me on social media and using #tanjavujinovic, #ultramono & #avantgarden if sharing images, videos, or sound from my projects + join the growing community around this project on the Discord server, where we organize events in the metaverse (all links on the contact page on my website tanjav.art)
Liquid Crystal Portals, augmented reality art installations, 2023.
FLOWR / BIOS6 PROJECT REFERENCES
Badiou, Alain. Black: The Brilliance of a Non-Color. John Wiley & Sons, 2016.
Barlow, Connie C. The Ghosts of Evolution, Nonsensical Fruit, Missing Partners, and Other Ecological Anachronisms. New York; Plymouth: BasicBooks ; Plymbridge (distributor), 2002. http://public.ebookcentral.proquest.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=978630.
Benyus, Janine M. Biomimicry Innovation Inspired by Nature. HarperCollins, 1997.
Cassirer, Ernst. The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms Volume Two: Mythical Thought. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1955.
Foster, E. John. ‘Plasma-Based Water Purification: Challenges and Prospects for the Future’. Physics of Plasmas 24, no. 5 (March 2017). https://aip.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1063/1.4977921.
Leslie, Esther. Synthetic Worlds Nature, Art and the Chemical Industry. Reaktion Books, 2005.
Parisi, Luciana. Abstract Sex: Philosophy, Bio-Technology and the Mutations of Desire. Transversals. London ; New York: Continuum, 2004.
Prusinkiewicz, Przemyslaw, and Aristid Lindenmayer. The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1996.
Rinella, Michael A. Pharmakon: Plato, Drug Culture, and Identity in Ancient TImes. Plymouth, UK: Lexington Books, 2010.
Sauquet, Hervé, Maria von Balthazar, and Jürg Schönenberger. ‘The Ancestral Flower of Angiosperms and Its Early Diversification’. Nature Communications, 2017. https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms16047.
Starr, Michelle. ‘For The First Time Ever, Evidence of Ancient Life Was Discovered Inside a Ruby’. ScienceAlert. Accessed 22 October 2021. https://www.sciencealert.com/evidence-of-ancient-life-has-been-found-trapped-inside-a-ruby.