PHOENIX.WOLFANDDOTCOM.INFO

André Sier (s373.net/x, Portugal)

ABSTRACT:

Immerse your body in an abstract phoenix embodiment art construct simulator. Fly, dive, crash, and set fire to a daunting perilous cathartic virtual path at the dawn of extinction. PHOENIX.WOLFANDDOTCOM.INFO is a proto-videogame installation where users play and may become virtual mythological winged phoenixes, using full body invisible video interaction, within an environment over-populated with humans, obstacles, and scarce endangered organisms. Hatch yourself from burned previous life debris, learn how to fly and help the phoenix make its way to the sun city. Fly through escalating dangerous hordes of humans and obstacles that seek to prevent you from reaching the sun city. Only the phoenix can prevent the extinction.

DESCRIPTION:

PHOENIX.WOLFANDDOTCOM.INFO is a new work in progress by electronic artist André Sier within the wolfanddotcom series. It is a proto-videogame installation which investigates immersive interactive electronic pathways as bridges to non-human otherness, animal embodiment and cathartic gameplay. The works in this series attempt to subliminally shift human perception towards themes that affect us all on a global planetary and universal scale. Through invisible video interaction, using their camera tracked full body, users can become virtual mythological winged phoenixes in a proto-game interactive installation where they seek to prevent an inevitable extinction of endangered organisms and themselves.

The purpose of the installation is to create an art experience that is immersive, dynamic, interactive and above all fun to play. It also aims to create a virtual laboratory, and a phoenix simulator playfully playing with the theme around the current 6th mass extinction our planet endures caused mainly by human overpopulation – the Holocene extinction. This work comes in the lines of the awarded previous work DRACO.WOLFANDDOTCOM.INFO (http://andre-sier.com/wolfanddotcom/DracoWolfAndDotComInfo/) and will use similar invisible interface but with distinct interaction, functionality, gameplay,…

The wolfanddotcom series investigates immersive interactive electronic pathways as bridges to non-human otherness and embodiment. The wolfanddotcom series (Sier, 2011-), named after a creative combination of animality entwined with cyberspace, seeks to create experiences which expand human-body perception and consciousness by inducing a shift onto other species/bodies, by playfully inciting ilinx (Caillois, 1958) via altering and disrupting the perception of self, mediated through technology, algorithms, and custom human-computer interfaces. These cyber-environments thus become laboratories which operate as practical means of immersion of animal embodiment and a locus for study of human behavior. By forging a sense of otherness in the self, deepened into almost inhabiting other species, human users become more aware of their environment, and active listeners of their surroundings and of other lifeforms. Gifted with new senses, the player is now extended, transported inside the experience.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY:

André Sier is an artistic engineer with training in sciences, arts, degree in philosophy. Working since 1997 at s373.net/x studios, exhibits and performs works worldwide, with more than 25 solo exhibitions and over 80 participations at collective shows, festivals and artistic events. Sier works with code, 3D, video, sound, electronics, drawing, sculpture, videogames. Awarded at Jovens Criadores (2006), Bienal de Cerveira (2009), three times at Lisbon MakerFaire (2014,15,16). Sier underlines the series ‘struct’, ‘747’, ‘space race’, ‘k.’, ‘uunniivveerrssee’, ‘piantadelmondo’ and ‘wolfanddotcom’. Regular teacher of electronic interactive arts since 2002, invited assistant professor of digital arts at Universidade de Évora, he is currently doctoral student at Planetary Collegium.