While everday familiarities are collapsing (climate breakdown, the pre-pandemic ‘normal’, …), the virtual world has further colonized our experience of reality (Antwerp Research Institute for the Arts, 2021). A near future awaits in which our experience of reality will be increasingly punctuated by moments where real life and fictional realities seamlessly blend together: hyperreal moments where actual and synthetic realities implode into each other (Graham, 2021). In ‘The Desert of the Real’, the interdisciplinary collective Studio Radiaal, consisting of Jeroen Cluckers (video art, film, 360° video, VR), Jasmijn Lootens (cello, electronics), Michaël Verlinden (piano, electronics), Maarten Craeynest (music technology) and A. De Causmaecker (sculptures, space, scenography), researches how liminal, multisensory experiences can blur the boundaries between analog and digital, material and immaterial, real and virtual. Starting from the Buddhist concept of double negation or non-duality, Studio Radiaal researches the ‘in-between’-status of the embodied viewer in hybrid artistic experiences, questioning the interconnections of the Reality-Virtuality Continuum (Milgram & Kishino, 1994).
This MAXlab-project is supported by ChampdAction, Concertgebouw Bruges, Immersive Lab (AP), IPEM (UGent), LUCA/KU Leuven and docARTES Orpheus Institute. The output of this research project will function as insights and learnings: a learning base from which a co-production with Concertgebouw Bruges can be developed during season ’24-’25.
