Leo Castaneda
Item Showrooms, 2016-17
VR experience for HTC Vive or Oculus Rift
Items Showrooms is primarily a display of semi-functional sculptures used for viewing virtual reality environments. The VR environment's name borrows from the vocabulary of video games, where the word 'item' describes objects of value, tools or even characters with artificial intelligence. In video games, collections of items are assembled in various manners: from menus to showrooms reminiscent of furniture stores. In the virtual space, figures merge into machines, furniture, and body extensions in order to enter their own virtual spaces. The distinction between human and object is blurred by both the figures' lack of interaction with their external environment, as well as the ubiquitous unifying monochromatic textures pulled from Castaneda's paintings, photos and drawings. Personal photos from a trip to the Amazon sit next to appropriated images from diverse sources on the internet and screen grabs of instances in the creation of artworks, various origins and histories blend together as they become abstract textures and patterns. The resulting aesthetic reads modernist alien sci-fi mixed with a gray-scale psychedelia. It is a space somewhere between the past, present and speculative future that merges interior design with video game arcades, while also inevitably highlighting the design of the exhibition itself, as it is usually displayed with physical prototypes of the sculptural machines.
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