In the near future, many human activities from the real, Cartesian world will be fully embraced and functional in the world composed and conditioned by digital immersive media. Art is no exception. Portraiture, particularly in ceramics, is one of the oldest human and artistic means of expression, leaving personalized traces for the future. Portraits in the medium of ceramics, serving as the starting point for this multidisciplinary project, act as the connective tissue between durability, fragility, and the very presence of reality. Presented as standalone artifacts, they possess certain subjective characteristics that are not defined by external, visible human traits and individual peculiarities but rather freely interpreted experiences of writers (Baricco, Murakami, Pelevin, Houellebecq) who contemplate the present and predict the future in their works. Their identities are not crucial to understanding the project itself, although they (the writers) are in many ways important active participants in the exploration of contemporary society and art. Portraits and sculptures convey the project’s authorial sensibility, offering VR consumers an added intriguing value in case they are familiar with the selected writers and their work. Every effort they make to recognize and interpret an author close to them will be a welcome play and an extension of reception.

The virtual interpretation of portraits lacks a spatial, as well as a temporal continuum; it is fragmented along the duration of the experience within the virtual environment, with no boundaries to the illusion it interprets. Both mediums, with their inherently opposing characteristics, intersect at the focal point of their direct connection within the VR medium and the duration of its existence. Anything beyond this space and time will be an unforeseen individual mystery of their separate existence and endurance.

SPACE INSIDE SPACE

//VirtualUnit_2023 www.virtualunit.org