Today we introduce our artists from ULTRAMARIN in Venice – please meet the Brazilian artist Gabriel Massan. He shows three works at once with extraordinary digital landscapes that captivate with their crystalline ephemerality and oscillating amorphous structures. His artistic practice deals with the interdependent relationship between fictional existences and digital environments and the investigation of representational possibilities of colorfulness, personal identity and time. We met him in advance for an interview – but read for yourself:

VRHAM!: At ULTRAMARIN – An immersive Exhibition you are represented with the animated video work THE DANCE FROM BELOW /BANHEIRA DE GESSO / NO ADVENTURE LAND (WMG). What relation does your work have to the theme of the Exhibition: “water”?

GABRIEL MASSAN: My research explores the performance of the organic through digital sculptures. The liquidity of movement in animation and the experimentation in habitat construction are influenced by the possible presence of water in these fictitious bodies and atmospheres. I also work with the development of fluids and watery surfaces that simulate rivers, lakes and seas, that devastate and/or bathe the lives I dedicate myself to imagine.

There is hardly a city like Venice that fits better to the theme of ULTRAMARIN: What is special for you about the lagoon city and what are you looking forward to the most?

I like the power that water exerts over the city, which defines precisely the way we enter and navigate this territory. The force of this existence that advances and advances over us and over our choices. Returning to Venice in the same year, but now rethinking its power and peculiarity is very significant for the work I have been developing as an artist.

What current developments in the field of digital art are you observing at the moment: which techniques do you already use, which innovations would you like to use (more) of, and how do technical developments influence your work?

My work takes shape digitally. My drafts are virtual. I start by using techniques in digital sculpture, digital painting and 3D animation. These compositions are firstly presented through video art and still images, like photographs. Then I explore augmented reality filters, proximity sensors, sound reaction and virtual reality. In the last two years I’ve been focusing on games and interactivity. The next step would be to integrate these environments with live simulations and mixed reality performances. The way I present my work defines the interpretations and impacts I will have on the public. Understanding what brings me closer and what pushes me away is crucial to develop a critique of the bridge between the different dimensions I explore.

Fiona Fritz is a historian and program manager for eCommemoration in the History and Politics Department of the Körber-Stiftung. Since 2018 she has been designing and coordinating international history policy projects and digital formats for young Europeans at the Körber-Stiftung. We spoke with her about the challenges of digitization and the XR History Award.

VRHAM!: Dear Fiona, the Körber-Stiftung is committed to international understanding and a vibrant civil society. What role does the keyword “digitalization” play in this context?

FIONA FRITZ: As the Körber-Stiftung, our mission statement is “Making society better. This also applies to digitization, which is already permeating and changing almost all areas of society. Many of the Körber-Stiftung’s programs therefore deal specifically with the effects of digitization on civil society, for example with hate speech on the net against local politicians, but also with strengthening the digital skills of children and young people.

In our area of history and politics, we are primarily concerned with the aspect of international understanding, which is made easier by global networking. In the digital realm, national borders no longer play a role in direct exchange, while national echo chambers remain stable in the discussion of history. At the same time, conspiracy myths and historical distortion are spreading faster than ever. This is precisely where we come in with our programs in the field of history and politics.

You are the program manager of the Körber-Stiftung’s eCommemmoration project – what is the goal of your work?

Our program eCommemoration is about history and memory in digital formats, in games, social media and extended reality. New technologies and new generations raise new questions about history. How can we use digital opportunities to create a multi-voiced and relevant memory practice? With eCommemoration, we connect actors across borders and disciplines who are engaged with history. With our eCommemoration Convention, we bring together historians, museum makers, developers, and creatives from around the world to explore, discuss, and create history and memory in games, social media, and extended reality.

We also produce our History & Politics podcast, in which we talk with guests from a variety of backgrounds about why history is always the present, and how looking back helps us to understand it better.

What challenges do you face in your work to think history and memory digitally?

Just in the last few months, with the Russian war against Ukraine, we have had to learn quite massively that history is an extremely powerful tool that is too often manipulated. That’s exactly why we initiated the XR History Award together with VRHAM!. We want to promote creative projects that use exciting virtual, augmented or mixed reality technologies to broaden our view of history and thus create new approaches. That’s why it’s important to us that with the XR History Award we can honor a project that tells fact-based stories about the past in new formats.

In our work, it is particularly important to us to bring together people from the most diverse backgrounds and countries. This is the only way we can break down prejudices against “dry history” or new digital formats. History takes place in the digital realm, whether we as a society like it or not. That’s why it’s important to us to take games and extended reality seriously as cultural assets, but at the same time to question them critically. And above all, not just to talk about the formats, but to actually try them out: Gaming and immersion, and really experiencing what the potentials, but also the limits, are in the digital.

As part of the exhibition “ULTRAmarin – An immersive Exhibition”, VRHAM! in cooperation with the Körber-Stiftung is presenting the XR History Award – more than 80 works were submitted, which you evaluated as part of the jury. What was particularly important to you in selecting the winner?

We had a really great international and interdisciplinary jury that brought together expertise from the VR field, media science, but also history. As a historian, it was particularly important to me that it was not a purely fictional story, but that it was based on real and comprehensible sources or eyewitness accounts and did not falsify history.

It was equally important to us that the project find a creative approach and show new perspectives through an artistic view. I was really excited by the submissions, because they show how vivid history and memory are in the field of extended reality. The project that we are now honoring with the XR History Award is, in my view, special in terms of the concrete stories that are told. At the same time, it serves as a model of what engagement with, or even reconciliation with, contested history can look like.

In the VR film Child of Empire, two contemporary witnesses from India and Pakistan tell their stories of escape after the violent partition in 1947. The narratives of the two protagonists are not dominated by the hatred that still too often defines the relationship between India and Pakistan today. Thus, Child of Empire overcomes the tendency to create a hierarchy of victims by placing the two narrated stories on equal footing.

Deutsche Kreditbank (DKB) continues its commitment to VRHAM! Festival as a partner again this year. We pick up the conversation from DKB Finanzwissen with Anne Schwanz. Anne is co-founder of the gallery Office Impart, which sees itself as a platform for contemporary art. She is also co-founder of the research initiative Art+Tech Report, which looks at the interface between art, market and technology. In this interview with DKB, she talks about the digitization of art, NFTs and the opportunities for the art market, among other topics. We think: A great insight that we want to share with you!

DKB Finanzwissen: In addition to the art trade, artworks are also becoming increasingly digital. How can we imagine a digital work of art and what forms can it take?

ANNE SCHWANZ: (…) Digital art can be anything created digitally or where digital technologies are the tools. It can take many forms: from a jpg file to a website, algorithmic programs, virtual reality representations to a video game. There are almost no limits to creativity.

DKB: What do you think distinguishes digital from analog art?

I don’t really see any difference. With a good work of art, the artistic concept is the most important thing. A digital work of art exists in digital space. But that doesn’t mean it’s any less real. The way it is perceived is just different, and you have to get involved with that. For example, you experience an immersive work of art that you can enter and that works with sound and light in a completely different way than a small drawing. (…)

DKB: Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are a hype topic right now. What opportunities do NFTs offer for the art trade?

The big opportunity I see is that digital art will become more visible as a medium and more directly tradable through developments in blockchain technology. Through NFTs, the idea of digital ownership is once again brought into focus. This will play a major role in the future as more and more takes place in the digital space. (…). But despite all the hype, in the long run it will be primarily about quality, and only that will prevail. Those who collect art NFTs usually do so with a similar motivation as traditional collectors.

Want to read more from Anne? Here you can find the entire interview with further exciting insights on art, market and digitalization. Shout out to Anne and DKB for the exciting interview!

NFT – What? We asked ourselves the same question. Here you can find an introduction to the NFT business from DKB, a How-To (or a How-Not-To-Do) with all the important facts. Have fun!