October 1st, 2002 - March 1st, 2003
Categories: VR Art
Animagina :: (life+imagination)
An experimental collaborative VR project which plays with techno-topian / technopocalypse symbols in a conceptual environment. A growing vase, tumbling dice of fate, spiritual pyramids, a menacing robot, and an eye, like a surveillance camera, monitoring our movements. The idea of the project is to reveal the cross-cultural meaning of these objects as they coexist in real time and virtual space. Following the “exquisite corpse” model, a surrealist technique that exploits the mystique of accident, the symbols come together to transport the user into their spatial logic. The symbols in Animagina are also connected to two subenvironments: Rutopia and Polytopia.
Rutopia
My dream is that the entire world is turned into a Park as meltence paradise. This Park should be like this so perfectly combined.
- Interview with Dimitriy Sergeevich Likhachev discussing the parks surrounding Tsarskoye Selo, Russia.
Rutopia describes an ideal garden, a fairy Park, which shows the unity of man, nature and technology. Its visual style is based on poetics and symbology from Russian fairy tales and Russian folk art. In Rutopia, trees communicate with the visitor of the Park, and their growth depends on his proximity. In this Park, rationalistic technology, mystery of nature and human presence are harmonized in a perfect balance, “as meltence paradise.” Rutopia shows this interactive VR Park as a sketch of the premature embodiment of this wonderful time and place.
Polytopia
Free-hand brushstrokes lead the eye from face to face on a series of polyhedra, nested inside each other. The user can move inside and out, and rotate the polyhedra around itself to produce different caleidoscope-like compositions. This environment is based on graphic design formal use of two dimensional space, applied to three dimensions.
Animagina premiered at the Version>03 :: Digital Art Convergence Exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.