VR-based Performance Piece
30'
Premiere November 2023, Perpignan France
Video Playlist:
Program Notes:
BLEED.SIM is a cartridge file used for the Telex VR Experience System. It’s part of the „NPC Ritual Files“ extension collection. These simulation (.sim) files contain ritualistic experiences of self disruption and ego dissolution. Turning a human into a non-performable character (NPC) is the shared goal of these experiences.
Bleeding is the phenomenon of either projecting human identity, agency and personality onto a virtual avatar (bleeding in) or of a person becoming affected by the traits of a avatar (bleeding out). This setting uses these terminology from gaming culture and applies it onto a VR-based setting and on the concept of agency and identity of the physical body. In this ritual session the performer is given a VR headset and a replica of the physical body and is then offered to alter, dissociate and destroy the virtual body through intoxication and self hurt practice. It hence addresses the core aspect of a VR piece which is the possibility to put into the foreground that you have been given a body. A fact easily disregarded with the fleshly body becomes addressable in this technical scenery. In essence the experience considers the normally strictly digital concepts of bleeding also as a phenomenon that occurs with the self and the human body in an analog setting. BLEED.SIM only tries to visualize this aspect and to make it directly perceivable.
No more seeing.
No more feeling.
No more being.
Only Bleeding.
An organic software back-roll.
A gentle anti-penetration.
Genetic Self Evaporation.
Anti-Ödipus.
Reverse Birth Channel.
Resetting.
Detaching.
No more see-ing.
No more feeling.
No more being.
Only Bleeding.
Credits::
Alexander Schubert: Artistic Direction, Concept and Music
Multimedia Kontor Hamburg: VR Development (Leonhard Onken-Menke, Sebastian Olariu)
Felina Levits: Costume
Cris Anutoiu: 3D character and Level Design
Philippe Spiesser: Performance
Commissioned by Association Flashback
Photos:
