Marnix de Nijs
Meta.Morf 2024 – [up]Loaded Bodies / V2_ / September 19 – October 13 /
Curators: Zane Cerpina, Boris Debackere, Espen Gangvik, Florian Weigl.
Gravitational Bodies (2024)
Gravitational Bodies delivers a deeply absorbing VR experience by combining the physical sensation of floating mid-air on an emergency stretcher with visuals of a perpetually evolving AI-generated landscape. In this experience, you escape gravity, leave your body behind, and lose yourself in digital infinity, only to discover that your physical body’s proprioception constraints hinder a total escape into virtuality. However, it’s not just the information derived from our muscles and nerves that we are tempted to ignore; with rapidly advancing AI technologies, we no longer have to rely on our cognitive capacities either. “Gravitational Bodies” seductively utilizes these specific technologies that led to our current state of emergency, playfully and critically examining their impact on our present condition.
The interface of this interactive work is a customized emergency stretcher, typically used to evacuate individuals from challenging locations like ships, ski slopes, and, for example, caves. This installation cradles your vulnerable VR body, wearing VR glasses, hanging above the floor of the exhibition space. The stretcher’s X, Y, and Z positions and orientations are dynamically adjusted using a motorized flying rig. The trajectory of the stretcher initially correlates with the movement of the virtual camera, transitioning from a standing to a reclining position, shifting your balance and sensation of gravity. Over time, the stretcher’s motions intensify and become increasingly challenging to endure.
The imagery develops from augmented to virtual reality and from a street-level point of view to an AI-generated bird’s-eye view. Hoovering over a landscape surrounded by undulating mountains, you drift through turns and fly over a meditative but slightly uncanny synthetic AI-generated infinite landscape. The progression of the experience will be directly linked to various render styles, digital glitches, fluid perspective shifts, and dynamic warping with effects that are loosely inspired by gravitational sci-fi concepts such as the O’Neill cylinder and the von Braun wheel.
The work’s soundtrack is generated in real-time and mainly focuses on supporting the physical experience. Dynamic parameters like speed and orientation are directly altering the game sounds. The ambient sound layers will evolve, correlating with the 3D world. The composition also includes audible and inaudible frequencies that drive surface transducers for tactile feedback and simultaneously transform the emergency stretcher into a therapeutic singing bowl.
Whether you’re feeling bored in your VR isolation or can no longer tolerate the physical misalignment and get nauseous, when you choose to re-enter the augmented state, you discover yourself securely strapped onto the stretcher, rescued, and reconnected with the physical world of the exhibition space surrounding you.
Marnix de Nijs (NL) b. 1970, is a Rotterdam-based installation artist. After graduating as a sculptor in 1992, he focused his early career on sculpture, public space, and architecture. Since the mid 90’s, he has been a pioneer in researching the experimental use of media and technologies in Art. His works include mainly interactively experienced machines that play with the perception and control of image and sound, but also radical and humorous pieces such as his Bullet Proof Tent and the Physiognomic Scrutinizer belong to his oeuvre.
Impelled by the idea that technology acts as a driving force behind cultural change and is therefore capable of generating new experiences where societal habits and communication are rethought, his work thrives on the creative possibilities offered by new media, while critically examining their impact on contemporary society and human perception. To create his technologically complex installations, de Nijs often relies on close collaborations with media labs, universities, developers, engineers, and professionals from the film and game industry.
De Nijs’ works have been widely exhibited at international art institutes, museums, and festivals. He won the Art Future Award (Taipei 2000) and received honorable mentions at the Transmediale award ( Berlin 2000), the Vida 5.0 award (Madrid 2002), and Prix Ars Electronica ( Linz 2013, 2005 & 2001). In 2005, he collected the prestigious Dutch Witteveen & Bos Art and Technology Price 2005, for his entire oeuvre.
Header Graphics: “Gravitational Bodies”, courtesy of the artist / Portrait photo: Joey Kennedy.