Curiocity

CONTENTS

2019 ABK: State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart Media Studies: VR Enviroments Studentin: Aikaterini Sideri Betreuung: Prof. Tobias Wallisser und AM Sebastian Schott in Zusammenarbeit mit AM Volker Menke, CAD-Labor

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Today’s Wunderkammer Element 1: Artifacts Element 2: Containers Forming Curiocity Level 1: Exploring Curiocity Level 2: Former Dome

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TODAYS’ WUNDERKAMMER

Museum of Ferrante Imperato from Dell’Historia Naturale (Imperato, 1599).

3 Wunderkammer first began to appear in the homes of royalty and the aristocratic in 16th century Europe. They were early ancestors of the modern museum and were intended to summarize the world, reaching to every corner of the Earth.

Wunderkammer’s order is oddly both aesthetic and natural. Delights ideas, art , science, data and fiction were under the same dome. Most wunderkammers had no labels.

Instead, they were hands-on, interactive: visitors opening the cases, removing the objects and dicussing what they see feel and touch.

TODAYS’ WUNDERKAMMER

google search: Wunderkammer

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Today, Internet, search engines and cable feed our wunderkammern.

Perhaps the wild chaos of the web is a reflection of an even more intense clash of ideologies among the people of the modern screen.

In this digital imagining era our visual universe is complex and grows exponentially.

TODAYS’ WUNDERKAMMER

Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chair,1995

#CHAIR

7 When we look at One and Three Chairs, we are invited to consider the concept of what a “chair” is, as well as the nature of visual and linguistic representation itself .Kosuth focuses on the idea of a chair.

We can imagine this artwork expanding today ,including other ways of representation of an object: for example the search of the word chair, the hashtag of it or maybe a QR code of it.

TODAYS’ WUNDERKAMMER

And what is happening when this whole artwork is turning into virtual matter?

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Is a virtual model of a chair still a chair?

TODAYS’ WUNDERKAMMER

11 But LCD screens cannot provide us with this subtle feeling of wonder that a physical connection incites.

But what about a VR environment?

In a VR environment you are able to press your nose to the glass or reach out and touch the virtual artifacts.

You can start wandering around and exploring a “microcosm” of the virtual world.

How can a virtual Wunderkammer that curates a microcosm of the chaotic web be realised?

TODAYS’ WUNDERKAMMER

13 The artifacts of the virtual cabinet are objects made of virtual matter.

The collection of them is a virtual population that can cotinuously grow.

How would we characterize this copies? Will the sculpture of King Uthal brought back to life?Perhaps in the same way a meme is alive. As files are posted, downloaded printed, different each time the nature of the thing remains unsettled. In its hybrid state of being and non-being ,the CAD model bridges and ontological gap between presence and dissapearnce- a multiverse of digital cenotaphs. http:// http://rhizome.org/editorial/2016/feb/16/morehshin-allahyari/

ELEMENT 1: ARTIFACTS

Chris Marker, Yannick Bellon, 2001

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The artifacts in the imaginary virtual wunderkammer are collected or designed through a process that aims to combine digital and physical matter the past and the present the decay and the renewal.

ELEMENT 1: FROM CAD MODELS TO ARTIFACTS

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From cad models to artifacts: treating them as important archeological fragments in order to give them a new identity

ELEMENT 1: FROM CAD MODELS TO ARTIFACTS

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ELEMENT 1: FROM CAD MODELS TO ARTIFACTS

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They are a collection of CAD models presented as fragments, souvenirs or archeological artifacts from the future.

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ELEMENT 1: MOVING THROUGH THE ARTIFACTS

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To design space with the artifacts I tried to erase all their contexual nature, because some of them could still be associated with real objects.

Collisions, strange compositions, changes of the scale. My purpose was to design an atemporal space.

ELEMENT 2: CABINETS OR CONTAINERS

step 1

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In the new virtual environment the space is created by transforming the old glass containers.

The displayed objects reach out beyond its formal boundaries, disorientate the player and invite them to come closer to the artifacts for a genuine wunderkammer experience.

ELEMENT 2: CABINETS OR CONTAINERS

an empty block of Curiocity

37 The containers are forming a new urban typology that provides a frame in which form can be brought to the scale of a new type of city : Curiocity.

Curiocity is formed using just one drawing: a figure/ground plan of a pattern. Virtual reality has tended to follow a simple pattern.

possible map of Curiocity

possible map of Curiocity + the shadows of the Artifacts

ELEMENT 2: FORMING CURIOCITY

Curiocity can exist as a parallel world forming a new “community” and welcoming an infinity of virtual populations in the non existent theres.

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LEVEL 1: EXPLORING CURIOCITY

equipment: flashlight/light shooter, moving platform guide: text/fountains

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“There are no walls, only partitions, shimmering membranes fraquently covered in mirror”* ”curiocity is a web without a spider”*

You can get as close as the rules of the city allow. Artifacts can be still or have their own orbit in and out of the containers.

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“Each element performs its task in negotiated isolation”*

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“Colour has disappeared to damphen the resulting cacophony ”*

LEVEL 2: FORMER DOME

equipment: flashlight/light shooter, jump to invite the objects

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Starting from an empty space the architecture of the second level is a decay choreography of the objects.

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