ALIENARIUM

A virtual reality environment by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster

Alienarium is a multi-user experience that experiments with VR as a medium which bridges virtual and physical realities, enabling out of body experiences and journeys into imagined, speculative spaces that can only be accessed in the virtual realm. As visitors put on the VR headsets, they will be immersed in a visually rich, deep space environment, where they will be able to meet extra-terrestrial beings and inhabit their glowing, abstract forms. The artist has designed the environment for five people to enter at each time, creating an experience that is both deeply personal and social, where visitors can interact in a new way, with aliens and with one another. Encounters with other alien beings expand understandings of connection, asking how we might relate to one another when untethered from our physical forms.

Alienarium follows on from Endodrome, Gonzalez-Foerster’s VR piece presented at the Venice Biennale (2019).

This VR experience is part of Alienarium 5, curated by Claude Adjil, Curator at Large and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, a speculative environment designed by the artist that invites us to imagine possible encounters with extraterrestrials. From her ‘Chambres’, an early series of highly-stylised fictional or personal interior spaces defined by a certain colour and mood, to her ‘Apparitions’ – ongoing live and holographic conjurings of fictional and non-fictional characters – the artist shapeshifts between diverse media for our greatest pleasure.