This interview is part of a series dedicated to the artists whose works have been selected at the SMTH + Niio Open Call for Art Students. The jury been selected at the SMTH + Niio Open Call for Art Students. The jury members Valentina Peri, curator, Wolf Lieser, founder of DAM Projects/ DAM Museum, and Solimán López, new media artist, chose 5 artworks that are being displayed on more than 60 screens in public spaces, courtesy of Led&Go.
Cosette Reyes is a Mexican designer, artist, anthropologist, and biochemical engineer. Over the last few years, she has participated in international research projects in the fields of mental health, human evolution, and cognition. This extensive research has inspired a deep exploration into the phenomenon of the mind and its corporeal expressions through design and art. Currently residing in Valencia, Spain, Reyes is in the third year of a Degree in Graphic Design and Digital Media at LABA Valencia, School of Art, Design & New Media. In addition to academic pursuits, she leads several creative and community-building projects.
Since 2022, Reyes has collaborated with House of Chappaz, a prominent contemporary art gallery in Spain, contributing her expertise in motion graphics, 3D, and video art. The choice of the nickname “Ammoniite” reflects a fascination with its connection to science, art, and mystery. The fossilized figure, with its ideal aesthetic proportions, aligns with her main interests. The added “i” in the name symbolizes a commitment to interdiscipline and innovation in professional practice.
Cosette Reyes. Instante, 2024
Your work focuses on the exploration of the mind, with a direct application to human-machine interaction research in interface design. Can you tell me about these two facets of your work, how they relate to each other?
I seek to articulate the whole corporeal part of the human mind, with its behavior and the relationship it has with the new media. I find it especially interesting to explore how the human being leaves its mark on new technologies and this feeds all the systems that will later interact with the humans of the future.
“We have, as designers and artists, the great responsibility to show the options that are available, instead of imposing a unique vision or use.”
As a designer, I think we are at a key point where we are not using all the knowledge we have about human behavior. We have gone from using color psychology and marketing techniques to having a wealth of information about users’ habits, which we can transfer to the users themselves. This opens up a wide range of possibilities, paths, ways of interacting with technology and allows us to go back to introspection and get to know ourselves through our own body and the environment, whether digital or tangible. We have, as designers and artists, the great responsibility to show the options that are available, instead of imposing a unique vision or use. Something that characterizes us as humans is to be curious and to have the possibility to choose. Through design we provide solutions, challenges that we solve with our creativity and the answer to these challenges are creative solutions that provide many options for our user or viewer: it is not about guiding them, or giving them a guideline towards one choice or another, but letting them know that they have all these options, always within an ethical framework, within the legal framework and the context in which we find ourselves and above all with the exercise of our own rights and respect for the rights of others.
Cosette Reyes. Instante. Displayed at CC Plenilunio (Madrid) as part of the SMTH + Niio Open Call. Photo: SMTH
You are studying in the Graphic Design Degree at LABA Valencia. How has your experience in this degree been, what does it contribute to your professional and artistic development?
In LABA Valencia I have developed a lot of technical skills, I have acquired a lot of basic knowledge and I have learned a lot of software, especially new technologies. But what I have valued most about LABA in terms of knowledge in the field of design and the creative sector is that we have contact with working professionals. These professionals make us very aware of what the sector is like, what the market is like, and how they have had this approach with a client, whether it is the Generalitat Valenciana, or the education sector, or even in associations where the clients are themselves. In LABA Valencia, the human aspect stands out. The teachers are very up to date with their syllabus, with all the educational proposals, but they always put a lot of emphasis on the human side, on the tangible and physical side, and on working with real cases, with a global perspective but also, so to say, with the feet on the ground. In the Design Thinking process they put a lot of emphasis on empathy. Empathy has greatly enriched all the knowledge I had and I have been able to articulate it now with design, which has led me to observe human behavior and people in a more global way. But always with that sense that connects and that is incipient to us: being creative, being curious, and above all something very important that is collaborative. That is what LABA Valencia has given me the most: the experience of collaborating.
It has also helped me a lot to meet people who are starting out in the sector, and to share the day-to-day with my colleagues and peers. That is very enriching. Valencia is a city that inspires, a quiet, green city, which is closely linked to design: it has quite an important history in terms of design. All the designers who are now active have had this contact, not only with the community but also at a national level. In the field of design in Valencia I have seen that there is always a discourse and a social motive. They look not only at vulnerable sectors but at things that matter to the community. They are always at the forefront, not only in terms of graphics but also in social movements. It is one of the cities with the highest quality of life.
“What I have valued most about LABA in terms of knowledge in the field of design and the creative sector is that we have contact with working professionals.”
You collaborate since 2022 with House of Chappaz, from this perspective, how do you see the art market today in relation to digital media? What possibilities do you see for artists?
I have had the opportunity to collaborate for about a year with Ismael Chappaz’s gallery, which is a reference gallery in Spain. The gallery is very supportive of design, but above all conscious design, design with a reason. As for the position of digital artists in the market, I think it has evolved a little slower than all the new media and everything digital. Acceptance has always been complicated, because especially after the pandemic we have gone more towards contact, towards everything tangible. But currently and in the last few months I have seen that this impulse to go towards digital and for artists to express themselves in these non-tangible media has been much more supported. I have also noticed that when projects flow better is when there is another physical, tangible and “classic” part, so to speak. In interactive exhibitions, where there is participation of the body, is where I see more possibilities for digital artists.
Cosette Reyes. Instante. Displayed at CC Max Center (Bilbao) as part of the SMTH + Niio Open Call. Photo: SMTH
Your work was selected in the previous edition of the SMTH university call. What was your experience then? How do you see the current collaboration with Niio and the options it brings to artists?
I found it very interesting to bring this art to all kinds of audiences, and not to limit it to museums or spaces where a public that is already interested will experience it. It is important that this happens after the pandemic, because we were quite disconnected in the sense of the body and the tangible, but very connected in a more ethereal sense. I don’t consider that to have been a bad thing, but rather that we’ve been given the opportunity to see how we can be in both environments and have this more hybrid essence. That you go to a physical space of leisure, recreation, being more connected to yourself and seeing the works that speak to your own body, I think that was a very important point to reconnect with all of that. It can be for all audiences a point of inspiration, and I have also seen it in the second call: the artists have brought a much more introspective and more conscious discourse in terms of new media, and also in terms of the body. It’s revealing that most of us have touched the collective: that’s a very interesting process in which you discover yourself as a person and then you see what’s around you and how you can collaborate.
“I found it very interesting to bring this art to all kinds of audiences, and not to limit it to museums or spaces where a public that is already interested will experience it.”
Tell us about Instante: you have worked with Artificial Intelligence programs to generate the dreamlike images that populate this video. How does this piece fit in with your work and your fascination with surrealism? What has it been like to work with AI?
In this work I had thought of doing something else more inclined towards video art, much more about the body but with touches of reverie, capturing physical spaces in which we find ourselves safe, but that we can no longer find. Regarding working with AI, although it seems that these systems are automated and that we only have to give them a few instructions so that everything builds itself, it turns out that there is a kind of dialogue: when I started, I had something very concrete in mind, but when after interacting with these models of artificial intelligence I realized that it wasn’t two or three clicks. So I decided to take up the idea of how our mind doesn’t always reflect what’s going on through our own corporeality. So I gave myself the task of looking for many more references, to give a twist to the idea I had, because it was going the other way and I found it an interesting challenge to say to myself, “I don’t think I should take what this one artificial intelligence engine is giving me, but I could combine it with others and make them collaborate and feed back to each other.”
Cosette Reyes. Instante. Displayed at CC Zaragoza as part of the SMTH + Niio Open Call. Photo: SMTH
I used three models and thanks to that combination I was able to give my original idea a life and essence of its own. As designers we always have the challenge of having an idea, and in the course of being able to materialize it we have a lot of possibilities of tools and new media to be able to transmit it. I wanted to make a tribute to everything we have and everything we enjoy, always being aware that we don’t know when is the last moment we will be able to enjoy it. And I’m not just talking about the natural and tangible environments, but also that our own tools as designers and artists are changing. The Photoshop we used to know, where we could spend hours removing a background, now artificial intelligence is included and in two clicks it removes the background and then you have to adapt to these new times, to these new speeds, and to the new results that technologies are giving you. All this can help you and give you many more possibilities to develop your creativity.
“Now most artificial intelligence engines ask you not only for a prompt but also for a context, a story, an aesthetic.”
Part of the process of working with AI is the use of language, through the prompts with which the images are generated. For me this has been very interesting, because I like writing very much, I have always enjoyed writing and it is one of my best ways of expression. I have always considered it necessary to accompany the visual pieces with text to communicate what I wanted. Now most artificial intelligence engines ask you not only for a prompt but also for a context, a story, an aesthetic, with a description as extensive and precise as possible of what you want to create. The program adapts more and more to the subjective, to the associations of ideas, and in this way gives you results that are less and less strange or sinister and more and more familiar, with which it is easier to connect. You have to narrate a story to it, and then tell it “from all this that I’ve told you, create an image of what happens when this or that happens.”
Cosette Reyes. Instante. Displayed at CC FAN Mallorca as part of the SMTH + Niio Open Call. Photo: SMTH
At the end of the day, that’s what we designers and artists do, we create a story and share it through our own experience but always looking to connect with those who will experience it. Then you have to keep in mind that you have to work with different AI models, for example one that can enhance your prompts to be better understood by another AI engine, or one to work on color or lighting. It’s a new process that you need to adapt to.
Niio has proudly hosted a collaboration with artists and NYU professors Carla Gannis and Snow Yunxue Fu consisting of a group artcast featuring recent works by artists and NYU students Ren Ciarrocchi, Jessica Dai, Marina Roos Guthmann, James Lee, Tinrey Wang, Yuaqing She & June Bee, Shentong Yu, and Jerry Zhao.
Titled Phantasmaverse, the exhibition addresses the potential of simulation technologies such as CGI animation and VR environments in storytelling and the creation of meaningful artworks that explore new forms of engaging with viewers and reflecting on our digital society.
We asked the professors and co-curators Carla Gannis and Snow Yunxue Fu about the exhibition’s curatorial process and their views on the use of digital technologies for exhibiting artworks.
Snow Yunxue Fu, Daughter ICE avatar and her metaverse home on Sansar, 2023
Snow, you created Daughter ICE as an avatar that connects you with your mother and your family. Which possibilities do you see in metaverse spaces and avatars to build human relationships and experiences of presence with a distant audience?
I approach the Metaverse space sometimes to “make dreams come true”. Daughter ICE is a long-term project that in a way materializes my long-distance relationship with my mother and family members in China, and the Metaverse home of Daughter ICE is this visualized space of a dream house, inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater house, where nature and architecture harmoniously come together. This digital space also functions as a place where one can gather together with other people, like with my family at a distance. In Daughter ICE’s home, we can have pop-up shows, we can attend a live opening in the virtual space no matter which counties we are physically located in.
Snow Yunxue Fuworks with imaging technologies, such as 3D Simulation, AR, XR, and the Metaverse in interdisciplinary explorations into the universal aesthetic and definitive nature of the techno sublime.
Carla, as a “digital flâneuse,” you collect fragments of the real world to build immersive digital compositions. What is your experience creating metaverse spaces?
I have been working for over five years on a large multi-reality project entitled wwwunderkammer, that explores building a feminist, post-human, decolonized wunderkammer for the Web3 age. It launched as both an XR and physical reality solo exhibition in March of 2020 at Telematic Media Arts produced by me and my avatar C.A.R.L.A. G.A.N.(Crossplatform Avatar for Recursive Life Action Generative Adversarial Network). Currently, an evolution of this project, as video, physical printwork and metaverse experience is on view again at Telematic Media Arts, and it will be premiering at The Halsey Institute of Art in May. I have been collecting physical objects and 3D virtual models from across the global internet that represent topics that feel both curious and urgent to me: climate change and its impact on emerging and endangered species; historical and current political frameworks; networked culture and digital semiotics; decolonization and global pluralism; humor as salve and feminist salvation. In addition to the rooms I have built addressing these topics, I have built wwwunderchambers to date for 5 different experts on the topics of absurdity, decolonization in design, destigmatization of attitudes around sex and comfort in tech, digital accessibility, and preservation of digital art. There are currently 15 experiences that make up the metaverse aspect of the wwwunderkammer that you can visit online.
In 2020, I co-curated with Clark Buckner The Archive to Come, a 57 artist exhibition, (that included Snow!) as an extension of the wwwunderkammer. – both on-line and in the gallery – of short time-based works that address questions of loss, memorialization, crisis, and re-invention, through the lens of contemporary networked culture and digital media. I built the social VR/metaverse gallery, (a giant splash in a sea of water) to house all of the amazing works in this exhibition.
Two physical catalogs have recently been published by Telematic Media Arts documenting these metaverse projects.
Carla Gannisis a transmedia artist based in Brooklyn, New York. She produces works that consider the uncanny complications between grounded and virtual reality, nature and artifice, science and science fiction in contemporary culture.
View of the Phantasmaverse exhibition at Daughter ICE’s metaverse home, 2023.
Can you share your experience of curating a show in the digital space?
Snow Yunxue Fu: Curating shows in a digital space is great because we can both rely on the guidelines of physical show curation, and also can expand the rules into territories that digital platforms uniquely can provide and support. There are also boundaries we still have to work with because of the development of technology, but in general, it becomes more imaginative.
“It only feels natural to exhibit art in spaces native to where the creation happens, where the ideas emerge from, where we are increasingly spending our time accessing and viewing art.”
Carla Gannis
Carla Gannis: It only feels natural, given the artists we selected, who all have digital practices, like Snow and myself, to exhibit art in spaces native to where the creation happens, where the ideas emerge from, where we are increasingly spending our time accessing and viewing art. Being able to experience in your home an art gallery via the portal of a screen brings art to a much larger public too.
The artists featured in Phantasmaverse. Left to right: Jerry Zhao, Jessica Dai, Marina Roos Guthmann, Ren Ciarrochi, Shentong Yu, Yuanqing Xie & June Bee, James Lee, and Tinrey Wang.
How did the Niio platform support the curation and the assembling of the student show?
SYF: The available tools in the Niio platform help speed up the curation process, such as artwork submissions and info listing. It also reaches a wider audience that is different from a physical show curation. It’s systematic while attentive since we are also to work with Roxanne and Pau from Niio to make things customizable so it would better suit our purposes within the designs of the show.
“The Niio platform helps speed up the curation process and reach a wider audience that is different from a physical show curation.”
Snow Yunxue Fu
CG: It has been such a pleasure to work with Snow and the Niio team on this project! My direct interface has been with Pau and Roxanne, but the entire dev team has been super supportive in helping with onboarding and customizing the exhibition space to accommodate the multi-modal work being exhibited, allowing viewers to see the work in context of each other and individually for a deeper dive into each artists’ practice.
Read the interview with the artists participating in the Phantasmaverse exhibition and artcast
Niio has proudly hosted a collaboration with artists and NYU professors Carla Gannis and Snow Yunxue Fu consisting of a group artcast featuring recent works by artists and NYU students Ren Ciarrocchi, Jessica Dai, Marina Roos Guthmann, James Lee, Tinrey Wang, Yuaqing She & June Bee, Shentong Yu, and Jerry Zhao.
Titled Phantasmaverse, the exhibition addresses the potential of simulation technologies such as CGI animation and VR environments in storytelling and the creation of meaningful artworks that explore new forms of engaging with viewers and reflecting on our digital society.
We asked the artists about their work and their views on the use of digital technologies in their creative process.
Renz Renderz, AFTER THE AFTER PARTY, 2022
Ren Ciarrocchi(a.k.a. Renz Renderz) defines herself as an “extended reality builder,” a digital artist specializing in 3D modeling who creates architectural structures for virtual reality and metaverse environments. Currently, she is pursuing a masters degree in Integrated Design and Media with a focus in XR and selling digital art pieces as NFTs. After the Afterparty, the artwork she presents at Phantasmaverse, takes the viewer through a luxury apartment on the morning after a big party, peeping through the numerous rooms and imagining what took place in them.
You create architectural models for metaverses, how would you describe your creative process? Do you feel free to create beyond the logic of existing structures or do the references from modern architecture and luxury homes impose themselves?
I think the most wonderful part about the metaverse is the non-necessity for practicality. My galleries don’t need to stand on their own, they exist in a realm where the laws of gravity and space don’t have to exist. The precise planning and execution of a “real-life” building is much more intense with little room for error. In the metaverse, errors can flow! It’s a playful exploration of new technology while drawing inspiration from traditional architectural structures. I am particularly drawn to the minimalist approach of modern architecture. There’s beauty in our ability to stack basic shapes into buildings that are sleek and spacious. I still like to maintain familiarity in my structures that resemble “real-life” galleries and spaces, but as I progress with each one, I stray further away from the limitations of this base reality.
“As an emerging artist, I am adding to a massive sea of creativity that is driving the art world into a new era. I know that any piece I make will have meaning, because it’s an expression of myself.”
After the Afterparty depicts a luxurious home, the morning after a party, when everyone has left. As a young artist, do you feel that you are dealing with the afterparty of digital art and NFTs, or is there much more to come?
The interpretation of an empty, trashed, luxurious apartment is open and abstract. From a digital art and NFT perspective, it could represent a moment of reflection in the aftermath of the explosive growth and excitement that the NFT space experienced in recent years. The technology is revolutionizing the art world and empowering artists to take ownership of their own creations with unique and verifiable digital assets. The space and market will continue to fluctuate and evolve, but the fundamental logic behind these technologies is solid and revolutionary. The space is already full of incredibly talented artists who are utilizing NFTs to empower themselves and their work. As an emerging artist entering the space alongside them, I know that I am adding to a massive sea of creativity that is driving the art world into a new era. I know that any piece I make will have meaning, because it’s an expression of myself.
James Lee, Interactive Visualizations, 2021
James Lee is a creative technologist who James is a creative technologist that solves problems by creating interactive experiences, web 3D apps, and physical computing installations. He majored in Mechanical Engineering and studied Computer Science and Information Engineering at National Taiwan University and is now completing his masters degree in Integrated Design and Media. In Phantasmaverse, he presents a series of interactive, code-based experiments that hint at his aesthetic and conceptual interests.
There are two layers to your work, its interactivity and the aesthetic composition that results from it. How do you balance these two layers? Which one seems more interesting to you?
The interactivity controls the aesthetics. By creating the interactivity, the works are now unique to each user’s randomness and also given the beauty of it. Carefully designing the controls is definitely interesting, so the piece doesn’t fall into a total chaos.
“I intend to give the cold numbers a «dress» for people to understand them more easily.”
You emphasize that the code you used is “simple and minimalistic.” Given that there is a beauty and elegance in the code itself, how would you describe the solutions you used to create these visualizations?
It’s simple because no complex structure or algorithms are used. I am always amazed by how simple loops and repeating elements can create such elegant outcomes.
Some of your works visualize external data. How relevant is that data to the meaning of the artwork? Does it drive its aesthetic output?
The works that visualize external data are tightly related to the source. It’s like a snapshot of the data. I intend to give the cold numbers a “dress” for people to understand them more easily.
Jerry Zhao, False Titans, 2022
Jerry Zhaois an artist working primarily with photography, videography, as well as recently, CGI. With his background in traditional art forms like drawing/painting, Jerry blends various mixed media together to explore the intersection of technology and ego. He is currently attending NYU Tisch for Photography & Imaging with minors in Business of Entertainment Media (Stern) and Technology and Integrated Design and Media (Tandon). In Phantasmaverse he presents False Titans, an allegory of the ego in our digital society.
In False Titans you address the role of the ego in our society mediated by technology through a series of metaphorical tableaus. Which references from psychology, the visual arts or popular culture can you trace in the creation of these compositions?
I think the clearest connection between my work to psychology is Carl Jung and his well-known take on the Theory of The Unconscious and ego-death. To quickly unpack the connections, my work establishes itself in three scenes which respectively represent the ego, the personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious all while maintaining an overarching theme of ego-death’s progression caused by technological advancement and social media. The title, “False Titans,” also references the Greek mythological titans who were eventually overthrown by their own creations, a parallel I draw between humanity (the titans) and our creation (AI and technology).
The first scene utilizes a 3D scan of Ligier Richier’s ‘Le Transi de Rene de Chalon,’ a cadaver sculpture, the type of which typically represents a transitory state between life and death. Further interpretation of the statue includes concepts of repentance and desire for salvation, which I likened to the desire to find purpose and make peace with oneself—a much-desired fulfillment I understand as universal among humanity and especially my generation indicated by the many grasping hands. But I borrow the facade of a snowy mountain peak meant to show the arduous journey and the difficult nature of the trek where the many hands also represent the many who don’t make it. The black sludge flowing out of the eye-socket is my further representation of ego and the personal unconscious leaving the body as lamentation of a realization that everyone in a sense is chasing the same thing.
“3D allows great freedom in creation—a paralyzing factor. I’ve found that it’s more difficult for me to “finish” pieces because there’s always so much room for improvement.”
The second scene takes place in a personal bedroom space suspended in animation with no clocks and a chrome skeleton figure. This scene includes concepts of baptism and the implications of the personal unconscious being constantly born and reborn by ego’s hand, resulting in the following scene of a shattered reality showing possibly separate but identical individuals lit by a massive screen that turns on and off showing how technology now molds and gives dimension to our personal unconscious and ego.
The final scene is the collective unconscious and a liminal space that represents how everyone’s personal features have been removed and the collective unconscious has developed a technological ego of uniformity. It also raises a question of who shall inherit the earth when we disappear as the figure is both a monument representative of humanity’s remnant existence than a true individual—a conglomerate existence of identical egos.
As an artist who has worked with traditional art techniques, what would you say that painting and sculpture bring to 3D modeling, and what does this digital technique allow that makes it different from other formats?
I believe that painting and sculpture have brought a lot of advantages to me in terms of 3D modeling as I can properly conceptualize as well as visualize what I wish to create in the digital world as a lot of my creation relies on my sketching it out beforehand. 3D, like other artforms, has a steep learning curve and a nonexistent skill-ceiling, but I think that the medium goes beyond this factor as 3D has many more ways of interactivity, allowing great freedom in creation—a paralyzing factor that almost makes it harder to create because possibilities are limitless. As such I’ve found that it’s more difficult for me to “finish” pieces because there’s always so much room for improvement in every aspect. But this freedom also has the upside in that its versatility allows for infinite innovation that redefines and paves the way for new definitions of art.
Tinrey Wang, The Other Relics, 2021
Tinrey Wang is a 3D artist, game designer, and multimedia designer based in New York. He currently works as a Research Resident at New York University, where he focuses on exploring the intersection of XR technology, game design, and fashion. He selected for Phantasmaverse a VR experience, The Other Relics, which deals with culture, memory, and otherness.
In The Other Relics, you confront the viewer with Otherness, from the encounter with the character Bubble to the zero-gravity space where they explore the remains of an alien culture. What interests you most about exploring Otherness, particularly in a VR environment?
In The Other Relics, the otherness consists of artifacts related to art, architecture, and culture. Using VR technology, players are able to navigate freely within the space, interact with objects, and experience the absence of gravitational forces. What most interests me about this experience is the opportunity to challenge traditional methods of curating and viewing artworks. By immersing the view in an unconventional space that blurs the boundaries of physicality, narratives, and immersion, I aim to provoke new perspectives and modes of engagement with art and discuss what is possible in the world of art.
“Using VR technology I aim to provoke new perspectives and modes of engagement with art and discuss what is possible in the world of art.”
You state that you are interested in new ways of curating and experiencing art. What is your opinion about the possibilities of art streaming (displaying art on any screen, turning a TV at home into a space for art)?
In my opinion, art streaming can offer greater accessibility and exposure to artwork to a wider audience, potentially leading to increased interest and appreciation for art. It also provides a new platform for artists and galleries to showcase their work, expanding their reach beyond traditional physical spaces. However, I think that there are still concerns about the quality of the viewing experience. The possibilities of art streaming offer both opportunities and challenges for the art world to adapt and evolve with this technology.
Jessica Dai, Life After Death, 2023
Jessica Dai is an artist whose practice utilizes photography and digital media based in New York. She studies photography at NYU Tisch and hopes to tell stories through unique conceptual solutions. Phantasmaverse features her work Life After Death, a CGI animation exploring a peculiar form of afterlife.
Life After Death depicts a somber, crystallized world inhabited by skeletons and nevertheless filled with a life of its own. What inspired you to choose these elements in particular?
Life After Death is a CGI project that explores the theme of death and the afterlife through a unique and somber lens. Inspired by the natural phenomenon of whale fall, where a whale’s body becomes a source of nutrients and sustenance for various creatures in the deep sea, the project seeks to capture the beauty and mystery of life beyond the physical realm.
Through the use of digital modeling and animation, I have created a world that is both haunting and captivating, where the bones of the dead are situated in shimmering crystals that reflect the light in a stunning and ethereal way. In this world, the skeletons themselves have become part of the landscape, taking on a life of their own as they move and interact with their environment.
“I use camera movements to guide the viewer through the narrative. I aim to create a sense of intimacy and immersion through close-ups and wide shots.”
As an artist interested in storytelling, how do you take the viewer through the story?
I use camera movements and transitions to guide the viewer through the narrative. The camera serves as a window into this mysterious world, drawing the viewer in and revealing its secrets one frame at a time. I aim to create a sense of intimacy and immersion through close-ups and wide shots. Music also plays an essential role in the narrative, serving as a critical element in setting the mood and tone of the piece. By combining haunting melodies and eerie sound effects, I aim to create an otherworldly atmosphere that draws the viewer deeper into the story.
Marina Roos Guthmann, When It Looks Back, 2021
Marina Roos Guthmann is a Brazilian UX/UI designer, currently based in Brooklyn, NYC. She has worked in different areas of the Design industry (including Illustration, Motion Design, and UX). She loves crafting weird experiences that use immersive means and coding. In Phantasmaverse, she presents a VR experience about post-traumatic stress disorder set in a surreal environment.
When It Looks Back is based on a traumatizing feeling but set in a rather pleasant yet eerie atmosphere, which sometimes reminds of casual games. Why did you choose this particular aesthetic?
I decided to set the experience in a flat casual game aesthetic because of how harmless and almost naive it looks. Yet, the more you explore, the weirder it gets. The contrast between a presumed pleasant setting and the weirdness of the experience is an interesting mix that enhances the sentiment that there is something out of place or wrong. In addition, I like how subtle the fear grows the more you explore, thanks to the presumed inoffensive look of the surroundings. In my experience dealing with my fears and traumas, something that might look inoffensive one day can easily be transformed into something fearsome that threatens my existence. Thus, the reason I worked with this specific look and feel.
“I believe VR can easily translate sensations and make the brain think you’re elsewhere, no matter how surreal your virtual environment is. This is fascinating.”
You state that you like weird and surreal experiences. How does using immersive technologies such as VR help you create the type of experience you are looking for?
With VR and other immersive experiences, you can go above and beyond to emulate sensations as you can literally create a whole new world around your audience. In this new world, you can play around with architecture, scale, and even gravity. And, because the person is immersed in this virtual new place, it has a much more significant impact than other mediums.
In the experience I created, I took advantage of spatial audio and sound by exploring different ambients – with other materials, objects, and sizes –and how they reverberate sound differently. All these nuances significantly affect a VR environment, and a simple whisper can feel very real and disturbing. Additionally, as I wanted to portray the “growing fear” someone experiences, VR might be the scariest choice. Besides being a first-person experience with the option to interact with objects directly with your “hands,” you are immersed in a 360º field of view with nowhere else to look at. I believe VR can easily translate sensations and make the brain think you’re elsewhere, no matter how surreal your virtual environment is, and I think that is fascinating.
Shentong Yu, Facial Expressions: The Signal, 2022
Shentong Yu is a Shanghai born, NYC based visual artist. Her work ranges from 3D Computer Graphics to Conceptual Photography, sharing an imaginative quality and reflecting her understanding of self-identity and the surroundings. Facial Expressions: The Signal is the work she presents in Phantasmaverse, which connects a questioning of the self with Freud’s theories and Surrealism.
Facial Expression, from 2021, depicts our changing selves in the age of social media and endless swiping. The Signal expands on this idea by going down the rabbit hole into a fully-developed surreal world. What led you to develop this environment? What does it bring to the original concept?
I think every artist has a different relationship with their artwork. For me, creating artwork is a way for me to document my growth, reflect on what I perceive, and visualize my thoughts in my mind. One of my favorite artists Gillian Wearing has a saying in her work Wearing Masks: “I believe that identity is fluid and it’s what you absorb from the world around you and internalize. But what you reveal of yourself to the world, that’s how other people define your identity.” I think that is highly consistent with my view of my work.
I started with traditional photography, taking pictures of beautiful faces. At some point, I began to question what these beautiful faces meant to me. I feel the face is a semblance of people’s identity, as it is what determines people’s first impressions while neglecting the inner side. These ideas inspired me to create Facial Expression (2021), in which I alternate my own face to challenge how a face can be seen.
While Facial Expression focuses on the outward appearance, I want to answer the question of what my inner world looks like naturally. I thought it was a good time to address this question after learning computer graphics for a year, to document what I had learned so far and create something meaningful to myself. And other than that, yes, what you see becomes what you express. I watched Alice in Wonderland by Tim Burton 8 times when I was a kid and am highly drawn to artwork with surreal aesthetics, so those are what influenced me to create the rabbit-hole storytelling and make it look like a dream. Finally, I created The Signal (2022), building this surreal world, visualizing my unconscious part, and telling the story of self-discovery. The Signal makes the idea in Facial Expression more complete.
“People’s participation in an interactive artwork adds new levels of meaning to the original piece”
You have also worked with collage and AR filters, what do these techniques bring to the ideas you want to convey about the self and virtual worlds?
AR is a really fun one. My motivation to create AR filters was simple, as I had a hard time removing stickers from my face when doing Does Shentong Dream of Electronic Sheep?, but AR makes it easy for everyone to try what I have done without suffering the pain. I love seeing people try out and their reactions. People’s participation in the work sort of adds new levels of meaning to the original piece, as it is not only me altering my face, but viewers can also alter their own faces using AR as well.
In general, I enjoy trying out different visual mediums techniques. Sometimes I determine the idea first and then the most proper technique to use, sometimes I determine the technique I want to play with first and then tie it back to my thoughts. Different techniques give the work a different character as well as different viewing experiences. It is hard to pick my favorite technique because I think the charm of it is to feel how different they are from each other. As long as a technique makes the work look more visually attractive or the experience more engaging then I am good with it. So far, I have tried photography, image appropriation, stop-motion video, computer graphics video, collage animation, augmented reality, and 3D prints…They give me more possibilities and freedom when expressing my ideas.
Yuanqing Xie & June Bee, Aftermath of Us, 2023
Yuanqing Xie is is a photographer and new media artist who graduated from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. June Bee is a New York based designer who studied both Architectural Design and Design & Technology Bachelor’s programs at Parsons School of Design and currently pursuing a BFA degree in Interactive Media Arts at NYU. Their work Aftermath of Us, presented in Phantasmaverse, is a short film created with 3D animation that reflects on the consequences of AI technologies.
“Aftermath of Us” has a distinctively cinematic narrative. In your experience, how have digital technologies transformed filmmaking and visual storytelling? Which references from the history of cinema have influenced this work?
Digital technology has democratized the filmmaking process, allowing anyone with the right tools to create their own voice typically in the form of films and visual stories. This has led to a proliferation of independent filmmakers, animators, and video artists, helping to create a more diverse and vibrant film culture. In this piece, we decided to explore this form beyond traditional films and animations. June and I (Yuanqing) as independent 3D animators took the notion of such a decentralized design process into our team collaborations and even elevated it to the core of how the narration could be.
By using Unreal Engine, we designed an open-world space that allowed content to be present yet has the capacity to have instant impressions developed over time as what is composed to the viewing experiences.
With the revolutionized digital technologies nowadays, the engineering aspect of filmmaking and visual storytelling became easier and more accessible to create high-quality visual effects that convince audiences what is the new reality. Such trends have led to a large amount of immersive worlds being created in this era. In order to navigate within this ocean of multi-media works, we decided to look back to the origin of how these started – Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982). The piece draws heavily from the history of cinema, specifically the science fiction and cyberpunk genres that have explored the intersection between humanity and technology. It references Blade Runner in terms of both its aesthetic and the themes it explores, delving into the impact of technology on society and the environment through the use of literature, religious symbolism, dramatic themes, and film noir techniques. This theme is reflected in the retrofitted future portrayed in the film, which is both futuristic and rundown.
In terms of visual storytelling, this work also draws on experimental and avant-garde cinema traditions. The use of surreal and dreamlike imagery and the incorporation of music and sound effects to create an immersive atmosphere are reminiscent of the works of filmmakers like Maya Deren and Stan Brakhage.
“Niio provides this pure art and thoughts environment that allows our ideas to continue to grow and flourish.”
Additionally, the rise of streaming platforms such as Netflix have transformed the distribution and consumption of films, providing new opportunities for independent filmmakers to reach global audiences and allowing a wider range of voices and perspectives to be heard. By putting our work on Niio, we believed in the same effect of reaching a larger audience without time and space limitations. Moreover, Niio provides this pure art and thoughts environment that allows these ideas to continue to grow and flourish.
Overall, we think this work is a powerful example of how digital technologies can be used to create immersive and thought-provoking visual stories that draw on the rich traditions of cinema. By combining cutting-edge digital tools with a deep appreciation for the history of film, we can create a work that is both visually stunning and intellectually engaging.
To what extent did the environment you created influence the narrative? Did you start with a storyboard and built the spaces around this idea, or did you first create the spaces and then experiment with camera movements around them?
The idea for this piece arose from the sense of uncertainty that Yuanqing and I (June) felt last year. Even before artificial intelligence services like ChatGPT and Notion AI were introduced, we were unsure of our place and role in the world as creative technologists. Taking and gathering the various enlightening and concerning elements that technology brings about, we created a space to explore. By examining the dynamic relationships within the experience, we aim to answer the question “What happens after AI?”
Why does this experience provide an answer to that question? The animation is viewed through the lens of the bionic/AI. Using a VR headset, we follow the journey of a lost bionic who wakes up in the cracks between yesterday and tomorrow and overhears two people talking on an old recorder. The content of the old recorder serves as a guide for the wandering AI as it navigates through space. The recording is actually a real transcript of an interview between Blake Lemoine – a former artificial intelligence engineer from Google, and Google’s first dialogical AI – LaMDA.
This is a transcript of an interview that led to Blake Lemoine’s termination from Google. Lemoine was working on the LaMDa project. As he interacted with the dialogical AI, he became convinced that the AI was more sentient than just speaking from a database, and actually understood the conversation. As a result, Lemoine and one of his Google collaborators conducted the interview with the LaMDa AI, asking challenging questions such as whether the AI had read Les Miserables, what her favorite parts were, and why. They also asked her to write a fable based on a newly introduced concept, and inquired about her thoughts on the concept of a soul, and whether she thinks she has one. After the interview, it was difficult to tell if the AI was sentient or not, as she seemed to have a deep understanding of the topics they discussed.
“The environment in the piece had a significant influence on the narration. There was no original storyboard, but rather the camera movement became an attempt to simulate AI’s consciousness.”
To answer the question, the environment in the piece had a significant influence on the narration. The cave-like space was created first, and the exploratory journey within it became the storyline. There was no original storyboard, but rather the camera movement became an attempt to simulate AI’s consciousness from all sources we designed. The intricate environment and the recording of the interview between Blake Lemoine and Google’s LaMDA AI serve as a guiding voice and source for the simulation of AI’s wandering.
Read the interview with the curators of the Phantasmaverse exhibition and artcast, Carla Gannis and Snow Yunxue Fu
