VIRTUAL FUTURES

‘Born Virtual'

The chance to produce some custom-made artwork for Virtual Futures Conference 2011 was a no-brainer. Back in the mid-90s, a truly inter-disciplinary group of philosophers, writers and scientists gathered to explore themes of cyper-culture and how our species will evolve with the evolution of the internet. In 2011, Luke Robert Mason proposed to bring these conferences back, with original faces alongside new - an idea that intrigued me. It would be strange to try and unearth the fantastic and uninhibited thought processes of 15 years ago to see how wrong they were and how right they were. It would be stranger still to propose where we will be in another 15 years and the extent to which our virtual identities evolve.

Doing an evocative piece of art for the poster was the brief. When I discovered that the original 1994 poster was composed by H.R.Giger - the great Swiss artist surrealist airbrush painter, whose work has been a huge inspiration for me - it was a connection I could hardly resist (See image 1 in slideshow below). I tried to create a dual-image that would encompass both birth and death at the same time. This goes back to what was expressed in the original conferences: that fear or possibility of living our whole lives completely 'virtually' - never physically touching or seeing or feeling each other, only through our minds. The first sketch shows this clearly: the foetus and the skull as one, symbolising birth and death, contained within an 'augmented womb' that acts as a chip plugged into a larger network. A scary thought, as if the person is born straight into a virtual environment, without ever having the knowledge of a human touch.

For me, it is really important how the Eye moves across the drawing. The viewer should recognise the skull first, its bold form, its sockets and teeth. Then suddenly the eye should move down as it recognises that there is a foot and a hand attached to the skull, after which it should swivel and try to connect these two extremities, recognising the form of a foetus. Since the actual features of the face are tiny, there is a slight ambiguity there about what one sees. Right at the centre I have drawn a tiny mouth and nose underneath which are giant goggles that wrap around its head - a reference to Giger's famous ‘Birthmachine’ painting.

It was fantastic seeing this printed full-size on posters around the Warwick University campus and on t-shirts of staff and attendees. Virtual Futures now runs regular ‘salons’ and discussions on the same theme, pushing the dialogue and explorative thinking of who we are a humans and where we are going, and continues to bring extraordinary minds together to find some of those answers. Links to VF and Luke’s twitter stream below for more information:

vf logo design

TBC Description