MMF MMXXIII: INTRODUCING NICOLAS GEBBE'S THE SUNSET SPECIAL

The Milan Machinima Festival is delighted to present Nicolas Gebbe’s visionary project The Sunset Special, as part of the special program Utopia/Dystopia. Gebbe’s work will be available between March 19-26 2023 on the MMF website.

The Sunset Special is a mesmerizing audiovisual and interdisciplinary multimedia experience centered around an animated short film. With a critical and yet ironic eye, Gebbe delves into the effects of reality-distorting imagery and narratives perpetuated by social media and advertising through new technologies. The project provocatively questions our desires, nostalgia, and wanderlust, and skillfully deconstructs the digital products that promise us the perfect life: the idyllic trip, the flawless partner, the ultimate existence.

Immersed in a world of luxury, abundance, and travel, The Sunset Special masterfully plays with the superficiality that permeates these digital products and their constructed worlds. This thought-provoking project examines the role of the individual in the digital world as a consumer, exploring the connection between virtual experiences and real-world desires. How much of our attention is consumed by these virtual worlds, and what influence do they have on our desires and moral compass? Gebbe's exploration of these questions invites viewers to consider their own relationship with digital narratives and social interaction.

The Sunset Special comprises a multi-dimensional and multimedia project that includes an exhibition, a VR experience (coming soon), and a concept social media account. Each of these independent projects is narratively and audiovisually linked, forming a comprehensive and coherent experience that offers viewers a deeper understanding of the connections between the digital and analog worlds. For instance, the VR experience, currently under development, delivers “a constant stream of tropical travel paradise images. The VR-experience lead through a high-resolution 3D rendered holiday resort featured by The Sunset Special”. 

Nicolas Gebbe, The Sunset Special, the virtual exhibition (Courtesy of the Artist)

A visionary work that boldly challenges our perceptions of reality, digital media, and social interaction, The Sunset Special premiered at the Locarno International Film Festival, and was subsequently screened at Annecy International Animation Film Festival (WTF screening), Athens International Film + Video Festival Ohio, Motovun Film Festival, Lago Filmfest, Vilnius Film Festival. Filmfest Dresden: Open Air Screening, Festival du nouveau cinéma Montreal and KFFK Short film festival Cologne.

Matteo Bittanti

Works cited

Nicolas Gebbe

The Sunset Special

digital video, color, sound, 17’ 30”, Germany, 2022

EVENT: VRAL #11: _FANTASTIC LITTLE SPLASH (OCTOBER 16 - OCTOBER 29 2020)

FORWARD, UPWARD, IN ALL DIRECTIONS

digital video, color, sound, 19’ 16”, 2018 (Ukraine)

Created by fantastic little splash

Introduced by Matteo Bittanti

Both poetic and prosaic, Forward, upward, in all directions is a psychedelic trip inside VRChat, a free-to-play massively multiplayer online virtual reality environment created by Graham Gaylor and Jesse Joudrey. Introduced in early 2017, VRChat has gained popularity in the last few years thanks to the incessant activities of live streamers. Evocative of virtual worlds of the early Zeroes like Second Life but enhanced by virtual reality immersion, VRChat has now spawned several paratexts, including a weekly online newspaper, talk shows, and podcasts. Players create their own avatars based on popular characters from video games, television, anime and movies and hang out online. Forward, upward, in all directions depicts a neo-tribal community interacting through technology, focusing on the rituals of a growing subculture.

fantastic little splash is a collective comprising  journalist, filmmaker and visual artist Lera Malchenko and artist and director Oleksandr Hants, whose artistic practice examines the nature and flow of information: its generation, distribution and transmutations. Fantastic little splash is especially interested in alternative realities, the collective imaginary, the notion of utopia and dystopia. Their work is situated at the crossroads of media studies, architecture, and anthropology. Established in 2016, are based in Dnipro city, Ukraine.

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Media coverage: Matteo Lupetti, ArtTribune (in Italian)

NEWS: A CLOSER LOOK AT RAPID TRANSIT: PREFACE

Rapid Transit: Preface functions as a prelude to Rapid Transit, an ambitious virtual reality installation set in a futuristic New York City currently under development. This linear, non-interactive experience was created by Victor Morales and his team – Daniel Dobson (music), William Burns (screenplay), Modesto Jimenez, and Christine Schisano (voice over) – as a standalone project. Both were developed with the Unreal Engine 4, one of the most popular tools for game development.

The action takes place in the train car of a New York City subway that does not look significantly different from the existing MTA service, with one caveat: most passengers wear virtual reality/augmented reality displays – called BandanaX in the original script – that project images directly onto their retinas. The travellers do not interact with each other: they are alone, together. In the video below, featuring a sound design by Don Dobson, passengers are “trippin’ on lerks” .

These test videos showcase Morales’s modus operandi. In the example below, different loops are played at different times. Parameters such as the duration of camera movements, character animation, voice and real time manipulation are modified on the fly by Morales, who describes the process as “an improvisation that generates different meanings (?) at every pass”. Here Christine Schisano reads “To Roosevelt” (1903), a poem by Félix Rubén García Sarmiento, known as Rubén Darío (1867-1916), a Nicaraguan poet who initiated the Spanish-American literary movement known as modernismo that flourished at the end of the 19th century. Here’s a passage:

You are the United States,
You are the future invader
the naive America who has Indian blood,
that still prays to Jesus Christ and still speaks Spanish.

An actor, puppet artist, writer and comedian, Schisano was born in San Jose, California and now lives in New York City. She received a BA in Acting from Sonoma State University and works with puppetry, music, movement, and video.

In another improvisational cut scene which was eventually incorporated in Rapid Transit: Preface, the character’s rant is dubbed by Modesto “Flako” Jimenez. The original text is by William Burns. Jimenez is a Dominican-born actor, writer and arts educator raised in Brooklyn who co-founded Real People Theater, a company best known for reworking plays by combining some of the language of the original texts with street slang and Spanish. As Morales explains, this ranting style is “part of the process as the scenes are recorded live. The actor/avatar is in a loop, which is also the kind of repetitiveness typical of mental illness, which sadly, is a condition that abounds in the NYC subway.”

In the videos below, both titled Summer of Struggle, Morales presents another glimpse of the futuristic subway ride, while Memphis Slim plays a medley of Nervous/Summertime (right, square format). The second example features more experimental beats (left, horizontal format).

While riding the subway, travellers are lost in their mediated fantasies. Technologies of isolation have always existed – from books to personal stereos – but in the future we will carry our wearable filter bubbles everywhere, Morales predicts. In a sense, passengers are simultaneously travelling physically and virtually, experiencing the ultimate displacement. Their bodies are distorted, their poses unnatural. Reality and virtual reality converge and collapse into each other.

This final example shows the process of moving the virtual camera inside the subway car. A long pan shows the travelers as they experience various kinds of content through their devices. It’s going to be a long ride.

Morales is currently developing Rapid Transit as a virtual reality installation, with the goal of completing the project by the Fall. Below is a screen-capture of the VR teaser. (Matteo Bittanti)

Rapid Transit: Preface was exhibited on VRAL between April 25 - May 7 2020.