JON WEINEL
Having already met Jon Weinel in a sound for games module during my undergrad, I was already acquainted with some of the work he showed us.
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His retrograded aesthetics refer to a 1990's digital world, full of internet pop-ups and electronic rave music - contribute to the generational nostalgia that seems to be everywhere these days. It is a combination of the antiquated mixed with new era immersive technologies.
Stills from 'Soundcat – Breakbeat DJ/VJ Set', uploaded to Youtube in 2018
Reminiscent of the Vaporwave genre, which is itself reminiscent - or based on - the aesthetics of the '80s /early '90s, Weinel's work has a satirical approach to the earlier days of commercial internet use.
Stills from 'Cyberdream', uploaded to Youtube in 2019
He creates landscapes to display within. In 'Cyberdream', these landscapes are often based on the real or natural depictions of landscape (ie mountains, lakes, bridges, pyramids) and then they progressively become less tangible with oscillating cubes taking the place of natural landscape surroundings.
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I found that Eduard Fadgyas' 'Shape or Form' takes on this same idea of a natural landscape - morphed and manipulated by the human digitization of this created world. I feel that it depicts much darker, and by design, less playful connotations than Weinel's work.
'Shape or Form', Fadgyas, 2021
Creating worlds isn't just about designing landscapes. Kirsten Geisler studies the real and the virtual in order to see how they overlap.
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From www.kirstengeisler.com:
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"Maya Brush is the first virtual beauty - an artificial body - which is based on the human ideal of beauty, but without having been created according to a physical model. As a model, it is the dream of desirable beauty that has become reality. Maya Brush represents all global prefab girls, the standardized and technically designed beauties as they are propagated through advertising and the media. Maya Brush is a virtual sculpture that was created by the artist Kirsten Geisler over the last three years and is now making its way into reality."
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Instead of creating digital worlds within which we can inhabit, Geisler creates characters to inhabit our world.
'Dream of Beauty' Kirsten Geisler, 1997-2002