Rebecca Merlic
GLITCHBODIES, 2022-ongoing
VR experience for HTC Vive
GLITCHBODIES is an interactive computer game as well as an immersive experience in virtual reality (VR). Here, Merlic draws on the structures of video games, a widespread form of digital entertainment. The artist does research into new forms of feminism, LGBTQ+, and drag communities. Using 3D scans, she makes digital avatars off of real people, which are then embedded into virtual landscapes. She creates intimate and sensitive images of different individuals, and taken together, they give rise to a diverse society in virtual space. Individual identities become a collective body, a network, which turns the avatars into politically charged bodies. They are contrasts to the heteronormative and binary avatars that are usually encountered in classic video games. Instead, GLITCHBODIES takes us on a journey through realities of people who share the notion of “queer” as a political attitude.
A 360 video version of this interactive VR Experience is available at the Radiance VR App:
Credits:
Director/ Artist Lead/ Unity: Rebecca Merlic
Unity programming: Vivien Schreiber, Anna Rüth (VR)
Sound design: Manuel Riegler
Script/Worldbuilding: Glitchbodies Protagonists and Rebecca Merlic
IMAGES
VIDEO LINK
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Rebecca Merlic is an artist, an architect, an experimental filmmaker. In her work, she examines alternative forms of society and considers how social and economic conventions can be changed. Using digital technologies such as 3D scans, she creates new ways to depict diverse identities in a virtual society. She is the winner of the 2020 Marianne von Willemer Prize for Digital Media. Currently, she is a transdisciplinary participant in the European Alliance of Academies: Ignorance is Strength AIR program, in collaboration with the Akademie der Künste (Academy of Art), Berlin and the HDLU (Croatian Association of Artists), Zagreb. Additionally, she is working on the project DigitalHumanism x FutureLiving in collaboration with the Austrian Cultural Forum in Tokyo.
A 360 video version of this interactive VR Experience is available via the Radiance VR App:
If you are interested in exhibiting or viewing this artistic VR experience, please send an email to us.
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