when you are close to me I shiver
"when you are close to me I shiver"
Martina Menegon
sound design: Alexander Martinz
WebGL Live Simulation
video, sound, indefinite duration
“when you are close to me I shiver” is an algorithmically controlled live simulation, a real-time generated virtual reality that takes place in a version of the future in which humans, out of desperation, gather in masses on the last remaining piece of land. Inspired by the walrus scene in the documentary “Our Planet” narrated by David Attenborough and produced by Silverback Films, the project proposes an intense scenario encompassing our environmental and personal crises. It reflects on how we identify and connect ourselves in different realities while addressing the human condition in a world in ecological and therefore social crisis. In this WebGL version for browser, a surveillance drone like camera randomly targets and focuses on different situations while a familiar voice-over narrates the tragic story. The grotesque low-poly clones of the artist’s 3D scanned body (per)form the population of the island. Through these perceivable avatars, the artist creates a new identity that arises out of plurality, proprioceptively renegotiating the fragility of both the physical and the virtual self and its realities. The dystopian imagery of “when you are close to me I shiver” reveals a seemingly surreal scene that is all too real after all.
(please note that this is a low-res, web version of the actual project)
©Photo: MAK/Georg Mayer and courtesy of the artist
PREMIERE: October 2020
when you are close to me I shiver
solo exhibition CREATIVE CLIMATE CARE, MAK Galerie, Vienna
Martina Menegon (Italy, 1988) is an artist working with Interactive and Extended Reality Art. In her works, Martina creates intimate and complex assemblages of physical and virtual elements that explore the contemporary self and its synthetic corporeality. She experiments with the uncanny and the grotesque, the self and the body and the dialogue between the physical and the virtual realities, to create disorienting experiences that become perceivable despite their virtual nature.
Martina is a University Assistant and Lecturer at the department of Transmedia Art at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, where she teaches “Digital Design and Virtuality”. She is also teaching multimedia tools for interactive arts at the IUAV University in Venice (MA Digital Exhibit, BA Multimedia Arts) together with Klaus Obermaier and Stefano D’Alessio. In 2019 she co-directed :afk with Shahab Nedaei and curated a series of XR Art exhibitions in Vienna.
She is part of sound:frame, Head of Extended Reality and Curator at the “Area for Virtual Art” a platform for immersive experiences and get-togethers. Martina Menegon currently lives and works in Vienna, Austria.
