Meta-Eternity
Presented by T Braun, Ayodamola Okunseinde, June Bee & Zelong Li
With text and performances by Germ Lynn on July 2 @ 3pm & 6 pm
July 1-July 31, 2022
Life is a great surprise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one. The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. - Vladimir Nabokov
As the metaverse unfolds, it offers new methods to connect and exist outside of our physical selves. What implications might this have after our physical bodies pass away? How do we make sense of our social and material relationships in physical space vs. virtual space? Is there some form of continued existence we can embed in the metaverse? If VR offers us a glimpse into these worlds, how can we move away from the insularity and single-player mode that it usually affords?
Gallery-goers will be invited to respond to the above questions by drawing, writing, and crafting a suite of soft device modular controllers resulting in a user-driven virtual world. Their text will be fed into an AI image generator and the results will create the blueprint for the environments. The controllers do not map 1-to-1 with the virtual space, as a result, the combined efforts of participants will result in an act of generative meaning-making and collective conjuring. The aim of the project is to explore, through iterative and collaborative performance, emergent understandings of virtual embodiment, consciousness, and the digital afterlife.
MetaEternity is created in part through Daniel Lichtman’s Community Game Development Toolkit.
Bios:
T Braun (Egregious Philbin) is a visual artist and drag performer of white settler descent. Their work blends queer theory, pop culture, and heteronormative archetypes to challenge binary notions of gender. Originally from Treaty 1 Territory/Winnipeg, they are currently based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal pursuing a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Humanities at Concordia University. Their doctoral research investigates virtual reality as a site to develop, express, and share the underrepresented life experiences of trans* people. Through this, they are creating Virtual Queerality, a virtual reality living archive that explores the fluidity of queer identity through participatory research, audio interviews, and creative collaborations with trans* artists.
Ayodamola Tanimowo Okunseinde (ayo) is a Nigerian-American artist, designer, anthropologist, and time traveler living and working in New York. His works range from painting and speculative design to physically interactive works, wearable technology, and explorations of “Reclamation”. He is the co-founder and Director of Iyapo Repository, a resource library that exists in a nondescript future that was founded to collect and preserve artifacts to ensure the history and legacy of people of African descent. His works exist between physical and digital spaces; across the past, present and future. Okunseinde’s works ask us, via a technological lens, to reimagine notions of race, identity, politics, and culture as we travel through time and space. He is currently a Ph.D. student in Anthropology at The New School for Social Research and serves as an Assistant Professor of Interaction and Media Design at Parsons School of Design.
June Bee is a New York based design student in Parsons School of Design. With the architectural education background and cinematic work experiences, Bee implements technology to create functional virtual spaces through immersive visual storytelling aiming to push the boundaries of human understanding of environments and living for the current generation. Originally from Taiwan, Bee worked was a VFX animation designer in DearStudioLtd for the Netflix movie “I Missed You” in 2020. It was nominated for Golden Horse Awards 2021. For a year in 2020 Bee worked as a full time employee in an internationally recognized green architectural firm, Bio-architecture Formosana, on Tokyo Olympic Stadium collaborated with Kengo Kuma Associates, Taipei 101 Sky Park, Taichung Arena, QurE (Quarantine unit for recovery Emergency, and Ecology) and more projects for 3D architectural conept commercial animations. Later in 2021, Bee integrated both her spatial and visual design experiences to contribute in a startup company, Remee, as Social Media Student Ambassador to promote healthy internet consumption for current social dilemma. Bee is currently a virtual reality design assistant for Ayodamola Tanimowo Okunseinde.
Zelong Li is a designer, artist. He currently is a student at Parsons School of Design based in New York. Originally from Beijing, China, after graduated from high school in North Carolina, he decided to make his way to New York City. His works integrate technology and fine arts together, ranging from physical installations to digital sculptures. His works explore the surreality in the four-dimensional virtue reality and its connection to reality.
germ lynn is a cellist and writer from Florida. Their work has been published in the queer short story collection Spaces We Have Known and their science fiction chapbook What You Call was published by Radix Media. Their work explores haunted machinery and neuroqueer phenomenology. They also write haikus and abject, confessional poetry for zines.