Stefano D'Alessio

Virtual & Augmented Reality

Experience

PLUG YOUR NOSE AND TRY TO HUM

28.9.–7.10.2018

Where does our nature begin, and where does it end? The role of the media, by definition, is expanding human perception. Virtual reality possibly goes a little further, letting us explore completely new and unfamiliar worlds – a previously little researched field, let alone fully exhausted in terms of its technological possibilities, that could in the future play a vital role in our daily lives. Martina Menegon’s self-reflexive artistic VR installation PLUG YOUR NOSE AND TRY TO HUM represents something like an open-world testing ground in which the expanse of the darkness that surrounds us makes most importantly one thing accessible: the 3-D scan of the artist’s naked body. With the aid of two controllers, visitors were supposed to capture the miniature bodies, attack them, stretch and spin them around. The bizarre aspect of all this: Embedded in an intermittently uncanny soundscape, Menegon’s artificial bodies, despite their digital nature, could be easily seen, perceived, sensed, felt.