Here we are – a Turing torture

A VR and Real Life Experience by Felix Kraus and The Swan Collective. The installation can be seen at the Mixed Realities exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart.http://www.felixkraus.com/     https://www.radiancevr.co/artists/swan-collective/swan-collective-here-we-are-a-turing-torture/

EN
The audience finds itself surrounded by painted architecture, based on digitized acrylic paintings by the artist group ‘The Swan Collective’. The accompanying voice over of an almighty programmer tries to convince the viewer, that s/he is in fact not a human being, but an artificial intelligence, implanted into a social media app. The audience’s memories of a life leading up to the VR experience are said to be scripted by a writing team. The experience uses Virtual Reality’s power to take over your senses, in order to leave the audience powerless against the doings of a programmer.

DE
Das Publikum befindet sich inmitten gemalter Architektur, basierend auf digitalisierten Acrylbildern der Künstlergruppe “The Swan Collective”. Die begleitende Stimme eines allmächtigen Programmierers versucht den Betrachter davon zu überzeugen, kein menschliches Wesen zu sein, sondern eine künstliche Intelligenz, die in eine Social-Media-App eingepflanzt wurde. Die Erinnerungen des Publikums an ein Leben vor der VR-Erfahrung seien von einem Autorenteam geschrieben worden.
Die VR-Erfahrung nutzt ihr Potenzial, die menschlichen Sinne zu übernehmen, um das Publikum machtlos gegen die Willkür des Programmierers zu machen.

Felix Kraus is the founder of The Swan Collective and studied media art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and HfG Karlsruhe. He received the scholarship ‘Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes’. The group mixes different techniques like 3D animation, painting, paper embossment, literature, photography and performance. Works of the collective were shown in places like Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Gallery W139 in Amsterdam, Kunstmuseum Aalen, Kunsthalle Schweinfurt and the Egyptian Museum Munich. As member of the Swan Collective he participated in various film screenings and shows, i.e. London, Berlin, Hamburg, Bolzano and Barcelona. He received the first price at the Bundesfestival Video Ludwigsburg for his film ‘LiverFuckTM’.