New Art City • Virtual Art Space
Esc to Exit
2/13/23
the moon landing never happened
flags, signs, dogs, flow
It is incumbent on an institution that has dubbed itself "The Topological Poetics Research Institute" to enter this space (or time?), whatever it is, wherever it is, and whenever it is. Hello! I hail, already so hailed, fully interpellated into the virtual space(time) of the art situation, one we have all become familiar with, and now, become eerily confronted by. What is the "art situation"? What is the "virtual" gallery? Underlying our queries there exists, it turns out, a Platonic gallery, a gallery where we go to see and are seen within (already) surveilled by its immaterial informational identity. And no! No immaterial. Drop that. Virtual? What does it mean? The phenomenological/virtual blank space, a space that gives rise to the sense of the neutral presentation of the art object, is the work of the platform. Look, all around, at this virtual neutrality, the work of an unseen hand, painted against the interior lining of our aesthetic skulls. Where is this space? Somewhat paradoxically, the extent to which we experience the background of this blank phenomenological space as blank is the extent to which the platform succeeds in its claim to neutral presentation of the art object's institution on the chain. This space(time) on the border of phenomenal existence is where, ostensibly, nothing happens, it is where (when), quite strictly, the idea, concept, material, and activity of the artist are all solidified into the fixed quantity we call the artwork. So many conceptual plateaus. And yet, here I find no work. I find only play. And how far can it go? Into the ludic phenomenal specter a new Orpheus descends, silent as the grey pseudo-void here discovered. To help "see" this virtual space we posit, or it has been so posited, a counter-spherical orb, a convex lens/prism through which passes the light that constructs the neutrality posited by the virtual NFT gallery. Here, the gallery unfolds and twists into a torus, a Möbius strip, Klein bottle, infinite sphere.
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In collaboration with New Art City a custom UI has been built specifically for this show. Every element of this environment is modifiable, as well as a new drag-and-drop function active on this menu page allowing any user to contribute to the work. It is encouraged one read the text below to understand the premise of the exhibition prior to interaction.
Minting a 3D object on OpenSea, or Foundation enables the object interactive functionality. Once minted, the object appears to float in blank space allowing users to orbit it as they please. But what is the space the object occupies? Whilst the only decipherable characteristic about the object's inhabited space is lighting, it's unclear if it’s in a space at all. Assuming a promise of Web3 is transparency, platforms should thus be neutral administrators of assets onto the ledger. But what if 3D assets were placed in a modeled environment the platform considered neutral, and the user couldn’t initially see? One must then question how this environment packages the non-fungible token, and what implications unseen spatial-identity might impose on the artist object, if any at all?
Platforms of Web3 allowing 3D objects to be minted in GLB and GLTF formats place these objects in a distinct virtual space, however, one can only see this space if a reflective sphere were uploaded through their protocol. Upon doing so, a spherical orb becomes a convex lens into a construct of the NFT gallery. At first glance this construct doesn’t appear to be anything spectacular— it’s proximity to online viewing rooms, and familiar cubic architecture suggest one might hang a rectangular image on the wall, or place an object on a plinth. In this case, it’s a dull assumption of what space digital-art-objects might exist in. Reproduced across platforms and presumably unintentional, the space itself is the color gray, situating it between the black box of cinema and the white cube gallery. As non-fungible tokens might already occupy a gray area, this gray feels like a fresh coat of paint on a room primed for transition. Therefore, this discovery functions as a prompt for artistic intervention.
Now Fungible, is an interactive work created by Jason Isolini and hosted by New Art City. Using techniques of panoramic stitching, mapping, and re-mapping it appropriates a previously unseen virtual space that’s secretly been the habitat for most 3D objects minted through a blockchain platform. Whether intermediary, or code-binding, this environment encapsulates orbital NFT’s camouflaged as empty browser space. Now Fungible is a conversational forum for visual, additive, or subtractive gesture. It is a space of contemplation, commencement, and re-organization for active users to explore off-chain. What does one do with this space now that it’s been revealed? While questions await to be pried, Now Fungible offers a replica environment to build upon, or not.
Much like Marcel Duchamp’s work Étant donnés, the reflective sphere exposing a virtual diorama functions as a peephole within an exterior interface. Thus, the reflective sphere-as-aperture solidifies platform dimensionality as a barrier of Web3. However, it is not forgotten that Duchamp provided instructions for the assembly and disassembly of his work. In this way, Now Fungible treats the appropriated diorama as an unfixed manual for user operation— one that calls for the deliberation of the suggested replica. Additionally, one should consider this work a camera obscura— It is a question of this simulated environment as a generator of the image itself, and therefore an apparatus of Web3. One must consider the projection of the image from within the diorama as an exposure of the NFT.
