BEING METASELF - 2022
Entering our second year, VMF Winter Arts once again transforms downtown Vancouver into an interactive open-air gallery featuring augmented reality, lights, and live entertainment.
In the new edition of the festival, the AR artists will explore the theme “Being MetaSelf”.
“The exponential growth of digital spaces shows that not even a curatorial theme about the metaverse can remain without alternate meaning less then a few months in. “Meta” meant something completely different when we first started creating this showcase.
This is a reflection of how quickly digital space ownership ebbs and flows in our society, and how fiercely important it is for artists to claim the ownership of what identity can possibly mean within the realm of pixels and interactivity.
With the recent influx of new activities existing within screens and through avatars, society is exploring how to connect, reconnect, and embody their identities through daily interactions with technological tools.
What does it mean to choose what you look like within digital communication? What does your avatar-self dream of that your meat-body-self cannot? Does one look human, animal, alien, plant, something completely new, or something that goes back to ancestral spirit roots? How does your meta-self coalesce and interact with urban space? How do you learn through your metabody space? How do you sink deeper into who you truly are through digital artistic expression, instead of reaching for a more perfect replica?
Let’s uncover new being(s) of inhabitation within the streets of Vancouver and the Metaverse through the help of AR technologies and more.”
But how did we come up with the theme?
We asked our AR curator, the VMF Winter Arts Head of Creative Production & Technology, and the Director of Creative Projects at VMF to explain how the theme came together for VMF Winter Arts 2022!
YULIYA (JULIA) BRUK
AR Curator, VMF Winter Arts
Creative Director, Founder at Future Arts Co
“Over the span of our curatorial program and creating the artworks, Facebook rebranded to Meta. Our initial reasoning for calling our theme “MetaSelf” was inspired by the fact that there is this larger part of our bodies and our identities that is being explored through screens and emerging technologies, AR being one of them.
As humanity enters the metaverse, it’s really important for artists to have a say in owning the creative side of how digital spaces come to life. Corporations are entering this world very quickly to own it, so it's incredibly topical. We need to stand our ground, populating and wilding the growing metaverse with our beautiful ideas.
Sometimes when I’m curating, I think of the theme first, but in this case I was inspired by not only seeing what people proposed in the submissions, but also what kinds of works were currently being made. So emerged the theme MetaSelf and what that means through different explorations, not only your body, but in your spirit. I was really curious to push the work artists were already creating a little further.
One thing I really loved putting to the forefront of the curation, was making sure we were supporting local artists and stories, especially from marginalized communities. Then, bringing in external voices into the dialogue - so we also have a few amazing international artists in the festival that round out cross-continental conversations.
Global decentralized communication in art is what the MetaSelf allows. It’s a way we can transverse space, time, and pixels through technologies and then bring them back out to a physical space. I think that’s what is really unique about VMF Winter Arts - it allows the MetaSelf to actually exist in the streets, parallel to digital space, and for others to experience it in an accessible way.”
BEN Z COOPER
Co-Founder & Head of Creative Production & Technology, VMF Winter Arts
“Julia, our curator, came up with the idea of the MetaSelf. We were discussing how we're on the verge of Web3, how it’s changing our relationship with technology, in the same way that the jump from Web 1 to Web 2 completely changed how our society works.
There are massive implications for the capabilities of Web3 and the spaces which will be created inside of it. Currently, due to the autonomy of the internet, there’s less empathy and humanism - it’s easier to say terrible things to someone when you’re not standing face to face - but there’s also all this potential for expressing yourself and connecting with people in unique ways. These abilities will only increase with Web3 and the use of AR. We're starting those conversations by creating space for the public to interact with art, digital beings, and each other.
For the 2022 festival, we are exploring the theme Being MetaSelf and activating public space in a big way, creating something for everyone that can be enjoyed also without having a smartphone. While last year for the first Winter Arts we just did AR, this year I really wanted to bring a physical aspect to the festival, to make it more accessible but also more visually impactful.
It's been a pleasure to work with the artists to bring their creations from the digital to the physical space. The large scale physical pieces will be eye-catching, but also serve as a bridge to invite tech-shy people into the digital experiences.”
NATALIA LEBEDINSKAIA
Director of Creative Projects, VMF
“My role is working in between all the different parts of the festival, supporting different pieces, the AR, the live site, the light installations, and the community projects, making sure they are tied together through a common voice.
Julia proposed the MetaSelf theme as part of her curating, but then it emerged how it was something that was really connecting the artworks together across the different parts of the curatorial process.
While the first VMF Winter Arts was more about technology and public space, the 2022 festival is really about how the body exists in both digital and physical space, how we connect and interact with each other and build empathy.”
LEARN MORE ABOUT 2022 VMF WINTER ARTS ARTISTS HERE
VMF Winter Arts is produced by the team behind Vancouver Mural Festival and presented by the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association.
Follow @winterartsfest on social media for updates!
