MARTINA MENEGON
“The
awareness
of the self
is most significantly
activated at the moments of disturbance of balance, in situations of perplexity and
disorientation”
– Ksenia Fedorova
#AUGMENTED REALITY #BODY #DIGITAL #INSTALLATION #INTERACTIVE
#PHOTOGRAPHY #VIDEO #VIRTUAL REALITY #EXISTENTIAL
BIO. Martina Menegon (Italy, 1988) is an artist working with Interactive and Extended Reality Art. In her works, Martina creates intimate and complex assemblages of physical and virtual elements that explore the contemporary self and its synthetic corporeality. She experiments with the uncanny and the grotesque, the self and the body and the dialogue between the physical and the virtual realities, to create disorienting experiences that become perceivable despite their virtual nature. Martina is an University Assistant and Lecturer at the department of Transmedia Art at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, where she teaches “Digital Design and Virtuality”. She is also teaching multimedia tools for interactive arts at the IUAV University in Venice (MA Digital Exhibit, BA Multimedia Arts) together with Klaus Obermaier and Stefano D’Alessio. She is currently Head of Extended Reality and Curator at the “Area for Virtual Art” a platform for immersive experiences and get-togethers. She is also part of the curatorial team of the new media art festival of Vienna “CIVA Festival.
Martina Menegon currently lives and works in Vienna, Austria.
When you are close to me i shiver (2020)
Live Simulation / Installation
5 tablets, HD Display, Gaming PC
video, sound, indefinite duration
Sound design: Alexander Martinz
“When you are close to me I shiver” is an algorithmically controlled live simulation, a real-time generated virtual reality that takes place in a version of the future in which humans, out of desperation, gather in masses on the last remaining piece of land. Inspired by the walrus scene in the documentary “Our Planet” narrated by David Attenborough and produced by Silverback Films, the project proposes an intense scenario encompassing our environmental and personal crises. It reflects on how we identify and connect ourselves in different realities while addressing the human condition in a world in ecological and therefore social crisis. On the tablets, virtual cameras scan the environment from various point of views, like surveillance drones. On the main screen, a similar camera randomly targets and focuses on different situations while a familiar voice-over narrates the tragic story. The grotesque low-poly clones of the artist’s 3D scanned body (per)form the population of the island. Through these perceivable avatars, the artist creates a new identity that arises out of plurality, proprioceptively renegotiating the fragility of both the physical and the virtual self and its realities. The dystopian imagery of “when you are close to me I shiver” reveals a seemingly surreal scene that is all too real after all.
Image: © Martina Menegon
Virtual Narcissism (2016)
Virtual sculpture, live simulation, video, sound, indefinite duration
"Virtual Narcissism" is a series of virtual performative sculptures that show the untouched results of the artist’s body that has, over the past years, been obsessively 3D scanned. The artistic process challenges 3D scanning technique by self-scanning and remaining still simultaneously without loss of body datas in the final 3D model. The work reflects on the translation of the body into a virtual state, it creates a grotesque dialogue between the physical and the digital.
All alone, together (2020)
Live Simulation / WebVR, installation, video, sound, indefinite duration
2 HD displays, gaming pc
Sound design: Alexander Martinz
“All alone, together” brings two realities, the physical and the virtual, together. In the Schauraum, a video installation shows virtual clones of the artist’s 3D-scanned body, constrained in a dense formation resulting from an algorithmical anomaly. Their perpetual torture constantly shifts between ecstasy and anxiety. As an addition, these bodies face a similar fate in a virtual space (Mozilla Hubs), yet there they can be experienced beyond physical limitations. Since the existence of the cyberspace, there is an obsession with the redefinition of the self as well as an anxiety about body and identity boundaries. We are facing a new experience of corporeality and subjectivity, a new artificial flesh and materiality. Through these perceivable avatars, the artist proprioceptively renegotiates the fragility of both the physical and the virtual bodies and selves, reflecting on today’s situation in which we might fell all alone, together.
