How can technology ground itself if it's just floating in an ocean of bits?
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Throughout this week, we’ll be exploring Jake Couri’s oeuvre. His remarkable A Precarious Night at Plumb Point is currently on display on VRAL.
In Find Your Ritual (2019), Couri skillfully employs elements of self-help and wellness exercises to explore the relationship between the digital and the physical. The artist is concerned with the gradual, perhaps inexorable, shift towards a digital existence: in his work, Couri is equally interested in the phenomenon of human beings acquiring machine-like features as machines become more human-like. Both projects are ultimately doomed, but the hybrid nature of this convergence is nonetheless interesting. In this work, the androgynous digital avatar performing all kinds of contortions serves as a metaphor for the blurring of boundaries between the human and the machine, suggesting - both ironically and earnestly - that even artificial realities need a moment of relaxation. They, too, must find their ritual.
The video's setting - a room afloat in an ocean of simulated water - is a nod to the notion of the digital as an immersive experience. The viewer is transported into a virtual environment that is both familiar and uncanny. Couri's use of this setting further underscores the idea that our digital lives are becoming increasingly entwined with our physical lives. Attempting to reach some kind of balance, the avatar - the alter ego of the viewer - ultimately fails to achieve a sense of permanent control, mirroring our own inability to cope in a world that, in the second decade of the Twenty-first century, has turned into full dystopia…
Matteo Bittanti
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