News/Research

Revisited: The Past is Present Exhibition

19 Apr, 2018

Revisited: The Past is Present Exhibition

Deep Dive Or the Limits of Immersion is an art exhibit that explores the possibilities and challenges of AR/VR to shape, integrate, and confuse aspects of reality. The projects showcased in the exhibit are guided meditations that take the viewer through various computer generated landscapes. These liminal landscapes in AR/VR present poetic imaginaries of ecology, technology, history, postcolonial thought, and disability, while also creating temporal and spatial multiplicities.

From Asma Kazmi's curatorial forward: "It creates what Borges might call the garden of forking paths — a structure that foregrounds the simultaneity of all possible narrative and experiential threads. The artworks included in Deep Dive Or the Limits of Immersion allow for a contrapuntal and critical read of VR/AR by interweaving multiple visual perspectives, synthesized media, non-linear narrative forms, interactivity with no logic or rules of engagement, non-photoreal and deconstructed formal vocabularies, a low-res aesthetic, and bulky headgear that keeps the viewer tethered to the computer and heightens their awareness of their bodies."

On April 4th, we were pleased to host a preview for this great program, curated by Asma Kazmi, at the Art Practice Worth Ryder Gallery. Over one hundred and fifty attended to see the "Kalimpong" by Shezad Dawood, "Cranes and Cubes" by Asma Kazmi, "Passenger" by Marcos Lutyens, "Nine Towers" by Joe Mckay, "Liar" by Jill Miller, "Beyond the Rubicon" by Lauren Moffatt, "Supraliminal" by Greg Niemeyer, and "Fissures" by Olivia Ting.

The exhibition runs until April 26, 2018.

We were pleased to have so many BCNM artists represented and also to have BCNM students involved in the organization of the program and writing the catalogue. Thank you to Sarah-Dawn Albani, Harry Burson, Kaitlin Forcier, Lois Rosson, and Adam Hutz.

The preview was sponsored by Art Practice and Digital Humanities at Berkeley.