The article is devoted to a “poor image” considered in the context of artworks created by means of virtual reality (VR). In contemporary art discourse, the concept of a “poor image” was actualised by German video artist Hito Steyerl, who analysed it in accordance with the development of telecommunication networks and Internet culture. We transpose this intuition to the field of a “poor” VR image, that is, one that is characterised by low polygonality and detail, poor elaboration of textures, and so on. We argue that a “poor image” can be used as a tool to form an artistic statement, or may work as an artistic device, as a “cool medium” (using M. McLuhan’s term), which encourages the viewer to participate in communication more intensely: the lack of visual information and/or insufficient information allows the viewer’s imagination to complete the image in a mode of perception that may be understood as co-creation. Our statement is confirmed by examples of VR projects done in the last ten years: Home after the War and In the Morning You Wake up. A “poor” VR image can be compared, among other things, to amateur video filming, where there is no “cinema effect”. The authors offer the viewer low-poly models of characters (that do not look like real living beings), spaces that are impossible to get into, backgrounds that look like flat theatre backdrops, on which objects seem to “play a role” rather than exist (as in modernist paintings). In that sense, the phenomenon of the “poor” VR-image opposes the existing conventions of the film and video game industry, where the “good picture” dominates. There is a “reign” of a high-quality, visually convincing (suggestive) image that allows the viewer to immerse themselves in the vicissitudes of the narrative, makes the medium “transparent”, enhancing the effect of the viewer’s presence in the virtual world. Unlike a “good” picture, a “bad” picture does not allow the viewer to forget about the medium since, like a Dadaist collage, it has “seams outward”. However, this is precisely why such a statement can be perceived by the audience as anti-commercial, non-false, as if it arises from authors’ need for co-existence and co-experience with the audience. In the hands of a contemporary VR artist, a “poor image” can become an effective tool for artistic influence.
The concept of phygital (from the words "physical" and "digital"), as the name implies, involves the synthesis of physical and digital components. This concept originated in the field of marketing; however, today it is increasingly used in various fields of science, including art history, and reflects a new trend in the world of art and design when the boundaries between offline and online environments are blurred. Earlier, the Internet was used mainly as a tool for promotion and communication, whereas in recent years the virtual and the real are beginning to interact more closely. The transformation of the virtual into the real and vice versa is becoming one of the key areas of contemporary art; more and more works exist "at the junction" of artistic expression and design solutions. In this regard, researchers of modern culture and art are faced with a number of questions about the nature and aesthetic potential of phygital. The purpose of this study was to analyse a number of representative projects of creative industries created at the intersection of analog and digital representation, to identify their specifics and expressive possibilities, as well as to clarify the specifics of image transformation during online-offline transgression. The results of the study revealed that today a special place in the field of phygital projects is occupied by works made by designers and artists using generative models. This is facilitated by the active development of machine learning. In particular, we are talking about artificial intelligence and its capabilities, which have recently become the focus of attention of artists, designers, and researchers of contemporary art. In 2019, the work Neural Street Art appeared on the wall of a multi-storey building in Yekaterinburg (Popova St., 9). With the help of machine algorithms, a mosaic, created by an artist in the 4th century AD to decorate the Spanish villa La Olmeda, was recreated. The image was applied to the building by a robot printer developed by the STENOGRAFFIFA creative team. The work of a “distributed author”, a meta-author [6] according to P.Galanter (an unknown artist of the Flavian era, the Yandex neural network, a robot-printer, creative teams that made the corresponding technologies and software), raises questions about the connection between digital and physical and the prospects of a generative human - machine creativity. Increasingly, representatives of creative industries are using neural networks to create works: for example, Scott Eaton demonstrated sculptures created “in collaboration” with AI at the Artist + AI: Figures and Forms exhibition, in particular, the bronze Human Allocation of Space (2019). At the same time, digital copies of their works are often created for artists using NFT technologies. For example, Filipino artist Bjorn Calleja, known for his NFT projects, creates tiny sculptures of his animated characters and then digitises them again as NFT tokens (in .glb format for 3D models). More and more works of artists and designers created with the help of neural networks (GAN - generative-adversarial neural network, CAN - creative-adversarial neural network) acquire not just a physical but a phygital embodiment. This is not only about "twinning", i.e. NFT twins of physical copies of objects, but about hybrid works and installations that exist simultaneously in digital and physical spaces. Thus, we came to the conclusion about the special role of artificial intelligence in modern phygital projects in creative industries, as well as the importance of the development of virtual and augmented reality as a space for the existence of works of this type. This study outlines the advantages of the phygital format for the designer's work, as well as the expressive possibilities of online-offline transition in the space of contemporary art, classifies art spaces at the intersection of physical and digital, features phygital as a means of communication relevant to today's visual culture.
This article focuses on media art (and specifically-virtual reality) as a powerful tool which allows transforming social agenda into personal meaning for a participating viewer. VR has recently become an intriguing medium which makes one feel present in the artistic "text"; to maximize the effect of immersion many VR projects give the viewer an opportunity to be not just a witness of a scene, but a participant, a one who takes action influencing the course of the narrative. Thus, we argue that VR should be analyzed as "machine" to gather new experiences and "melt" the boundaries of subjectivity including illusion of stability of both one's body and Weltbild. In virtual reality a user is able to experience the new subjectivity, being-with-the-Other, orto a certain extentbeing the Other. When such "meetings" take place in a safe space of aesthetic experience a spectator can literally take part in these scenarios and experience the affects which would be unimaginable in everyday life, expand his own boundaries of subjectivity and go beyond the limits of an egocentric position.
Научный электронный журнал АРТИКУЛЬТ №34 (2-2019) апрель-июнь Введение Телесность человека как социокультурный феномен сегодня получает переоценку в связи с развитием новых технологий и их применением для бодимодификации (изменения структуры тела человека путем хирургической, генетической, пластической и др. коррекции). «Зафиксировала» (и даже манифестировала) эту тенденцию статья Макса Мора «Technological Self-Transformation: Expanding Personal Extropy» (1993), в которой автор вводит термин «морфологическая свобода» [More, 1993]. По Мору, не только необходимость, но и желание изменять свое тело являются проводником подобной свободы. В 2001 г. Анрес Сандберг в статье «Why We not just Want it, but Need it» постулировал право каждого человека на бодимодификацию [Sandberg, б.г.] (подразумевая это как узаконенную возможность, свободу). Теоретическое осмысление эта проблема получила в дальнейшем у многих авторов, оформившись в понятие «расширенного тела» («extended body») и приобретя коннотации, связанные с самоидентификацией. «Расширенное тело» не представляет собой некоей жесткой структуры, а является чем-то вроде ситуативного дополнения натуральной телесности. Орон Катс и Ионат Зурр описывают это как «субъект технологически обусловленной и дополненной жизни» [Catts, Zurr, 2006, p. 2], видимо, по аналогии с «дополненной реальностью», результатом введения в поле восприятия дополнительных данных. Т.Е. Фадеева кандидат искусствоведения, старший преподаватель Школы дизайна Факультета коммуникаций, медиа и дизайна НИУ«Высшая школа экономики»
The paper is focused on the possibilities of contemporary hybrid forms of a graphic novel. The explosive growth of computer technologies and web-infrastructure at the end of the twentieth century led to emergence of a actualised global network platform and new opportunities for a variety of arts. The art of comics did not stand aside either: new channels of communication and distribution sites, interactive functionality, animation, video and sound included. Comics is a synthetic form of art merging with other mediums, among which there are painting and graphics, as well as interactive formats of works that are constantly evolving, providing more opportunities for visual interaction with the audience. That is why our issue is to actualize the concept of a modernized graphic novel and its aesthetic possibilities. Analyzing the examples of “mediatized” comics (web-comics, AR and VR editions), which has become a platform for a development of up-to-date forms of narrative and new principles of communication with the reader / viewer.
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