Digital artist talks about how Mark Zuckerberg’s barren Metaverse vision inspired his latest online multiplayer game.
Theo Triantafyllidis’ latest project is an online multiplayer game called. wild metaverse. Still in the early stages of development, the game takes place in an empty and strange environment, and players must work together to solve undisclosed objectives that are revealed over time. There are no text or audio features, and the maps are intentionally disorienting. “We want our players to develop their own way of communicating based on choreography and body movements,” says Triumphilidis. “I want to give them enough tools to develop their avatar body language and communicate in that way.”
A homage to high fantasy, science fiction, and MMORPGs. wild metaverse A sequel to Triamphiridis’ previous work, it typically consists of absurd and immersive environments that also double as humorous social commentary on the neoliberal forces that shape today’s internet. From URL The theatricality of his hybrid performance antigone (2019) Live simulation into the everyday life of the metaverse. orc house (2022), these parallel universes delve deep into the trenches of online memory, featuring a collection of unrealistic characters such as the henchman Lady Orc, the Frog Kingpin, and the Radicalized Furry, each of whom invites viewers to digital It throws you into an increasingly bizarre state of confusion.
This feature originally appeared in Fact’s Spring/Summer 2023 issue, which can be purchased here.
It reminds us of the primitive state of existence before language, wild metaverse This is Triantafyllidis’ attempt to rethink Facebook’s dull and widely derided metaverse vision outlined in Mark Zuckerberg’s 2021 keynote. “I watched it over and over, trying to decipher the meaning of what was being presented,” confesses Triamphilidis. “It’s so interesting because this idea has already been iterated so many times. world of warcraft and second lifeBut what they want to offer is really dystopia, and the scariest version of it. ” He argues that while communication on these platforms is reduced to text-based interactions and can seem cold and reductive, choosing to omit verbal communication allows for deeper, more specific They point out that virtual experiences will become possible. “I want to imagine what would happen if we removed all of these interactions and focused on this strange, embodied experience,” he explains. “This is not necessarily a game, but a tool to create more interesting online communication.”
The friction between digital art and the corporate motivations behind the technology used to create it informs Triamphilidis’ practice. In stark contrast to the early Internet era, with its delightfully cluttered forums and maximalist Geocities sites, Web2 Internet culture has homogenized online spaces, making them flat and boring. At the same time, we are seeing technology companies develop new products at dizzying speed and corporate-sponsored digital environments designed for maximum profit and minimum enjoyment. “These companies are so far ahead that artists always feel like they’re one step behind,” agrees Triumphelidis. “I place myself in the lineage of post-internet art, but I think about the early net art projects and how much optimism there was about the internet, and how the Web2 version of the internet was very banal and ugly.” I often mention what happened.”
Triantafyllidis uses the language of internet culture to address these subtle ideas, taking an extreme online approach that combines the language of technological accelerationism with memetic identity and gaming culture.Marshall’s Nightmarish Live-His Simulation of his McLuhan Vision of the Internet as a Global Village radicalization pipeline (2021), for example, is an RPG-inspired battle royale that pits furries, fantastical creatures, crypto anarchists and metropolitan insurrectionists against each other in ultra-violent over-the-top action, ending in a muddy mess. Immerse yourself in the scenery. . It’s reminiscent of a pandemic in which consensus reality dissolved as online frenzy reached its peak, people turned away from official news sources, and society became increasingly polarized. “It’s so funny how all these world events snowballed into this particular moment. The pandemic and the storming of the Capitol felt like something of a tipping point for internet culture as well.” he says. “That was heightened throughout the conversation with Pepe, but Gamergate was a seminal moment for the gaming community that almost foreshadowed a lot of what was to come.”
Currently based between Athens and Los Angeles, Mr. Triamfilidis graduated from architecture school in Athens in 2012, at the height of the global recession. It was a time when post-internet art and internet collectives such as Jogging and his DIS magazine were gaining momentum, and Triumphilidis immersed himself in his Tumblr community and early memescapes. “I used to spend quite a bit of time creating memes and just being online, but now I mainly just follow the gaming community,” he reveals. “I’m pretty anti-social in general, even online.” He claims to have distanced himself from online speech in recent years. “We’re in a very strange frontier right now,” he asserts. “I definitely feel less inclined to spend time online.”
But one conversation that excites him is the growing role of AI in the arts. “I’ve been playing around with DALL-E for a while, and somehow this hybrid, melting pointless output that these AIs provide also feels very, very in tune with our society and culture right now. ” he admits. “I keep thinking about how fleeting this is, the death of the image. If these AIs are so successful at creating images, what’s the point in creating images as an artist? Change is happening, but where this goes is still very uncertain.”
In his latest exhibition, pheromone spa, Triantafyllidis explores not only the potential of AI in shaping virtual environments, but also how these emerging technologies can be leveraged to create IRL objects that elicit spookiness. He used his text-to-image AI program Midjourney to create blueprints for a series of oak-themed tapestries and a sculptural sofa. Its garbled appearance feels very unrealistic within the physical environment. “This was an exercise in letting go of the whole process and letting the AI take over,” he explains. “There’s something very eerie about the object, but it’s very difficult to pinpoint exactly what it is.” But the process of converting digital input into a physical object is the key to his work. is the core of For his recent FW22 collection, Triantafyllidis uses his AI’s warped language to create a range of orc-inspired athleisure. “I’m really interested in this process of moving artistic ideas back and forth between the virtual and real worlds, finding the right material to make a sculpture, and trying to replicate it in 3D.” he adds. “For me, this is a way to really filter an idea and see what its core is through this permutation.”
Similarly, the accompanying artwork titled bugsim In collaboration with Athenian artist Labrilena Konstanterou, we combine elements of AI with real scents to illustrate how the digital world dissolves into reality.Inspired by Holly Jean Buck’s 2019 book After geoengineeringexplores possible ways for human intervention to combat the climate crisis, and its central work features the creation of virtual ants and robotic bees that perform their daily cycles under the supervision of shadowy human figures. It is a live simulation featuring an ecosystem. “The ants are stuck in a loop of constantly trying to repair this crumbling ecosystem,” he explains.
bugsim (2022) evoked cybernetic models that advocated self-regulating systems, laying the foundation for both ideas surrounding the Anthropocene and online communication. But, he argues, we should be wary of reducing these unpredictable and complex systems to zeros and ones. That’s the point of this artwork. “There’s always a strange feeling when I look at works of digital art that recreate nature. We use these resources to create representations of nature that, by default, can never come close to being as interesting or complex as real natural systems. There’s a dystopian feel that comes with recreating it,” he agrees. “It was very humbling to see how infinitely simplified what I was trying to do compared to the real ecosystem, and how fragile all these connections were. He increases Ali’s speed by 0.001 percent and everything changes completely.”
Looking to the future, Triantafyllidis hopes to use AI to explore the relationship between technology and the natural world more deeply, but argues there is a long way to go before realizing its true potential. “With many of these emerging technologies, there is a huge disconnect between the fantasy of what machines can do and the reality, which may be terrible,” he concludes. “But we still have a long way to go.”
Words: Günceli Yalshinskaya
All images were taken from radicalization pipeline (2021)
This feature originally appeared in Fact’s Spring/Summer 2023 issue, which can be purchased here.
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