[EOL]. END OF LIFE
Performative installation in Virtual Reality Digital Culture Theatre & Performance
What will be left of us back n the world when we no longer exist? Might we even live forever in the privatised metaverse?
In their artwork, Victoria Halper & Kai Krösche (DARUM) explore death, loneliness and the lasting traces that people leave behind them. Following on from the 2021 hyperlink installation ‘404_DEADLINK’, which was commissioned by the Impulse Festival, in ‘[EOL]. End of Life’ the artist duo looks at a possible and maybe none too distant future and transports the audience into the virtual landscape of ruins in a defunct metaverse: using VR headsets, the audience become outsourced freelancers of the fictional billion-dollar company “Imaginary Reality Landscapes” and take on the role of the staff who decide which digital remnants have a place in the richly detailed parallel realities of tomorrow and which will be deleted entirely. However, in doing this they also have to make decisions about irretrievably deleting human traces that can still be found in the world of three dimensions…
cast
Direction, Story: Victoria Halper & Kai Krösche (DARUM)
With: Victoria Halper, Kai Krösche und James Stanson
3-D Architecture, Design (Virtual Reality): Mark Surges
Music: Arthur Fussy
Design (Live-Performance): Matthias Krische
Texts: Kai Krösche
Character Design, Animation, Costume Design, Photogrammetry, Motion Capturing, Videos: Victoria Halper
3D Object Animation: Kai Krösche, Mark Surges
Creative Coding, Motion Capturing, Lighting Design, Enhanced Sound Design: Kai Krösche
Testing, Artistic Feedback: David Rosenberg, Matthias Krische, Matthias Seier, Arthur Fussy, Armin Kirchner et al.
credits
Thanks to Götz Dipper, Bernd Lintermann, Tina Lorenz, Felix Mitterberger, Dorcas Müller, Susanna Neueder MSc., James Stanson and Morgane Stricot
A co-production by DARUM and brut Wien. Funded by the City of Vienna Cultural Department (MA 7) and the Austrian Ministry for the Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport.
Work on the artistic concept for ‘[EOL]. End of Life’ was supported by a scholarship at the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) Karlsruhe.