augmented reality

ARTICLE: MERLIN DUTERTRE’S SAULE PLEUREUR SERIES

Merlin Dutertre, Saule pleureur, digital video color, sound, 17’ 09”, 2022, France

VRAL is currently exhibiting Merlin Dutertre’s evocative machinima Lullaby (2019). To fully appreciate the evolution of his oeuvre, we are exploring related works, including Saule pleureur (2021) and its sequel , Saule pleureur 2: Le retour (2022) which push the boundaries of machinima.

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Pikachu is sick and is forced to land with his spaceship in the real setting of Voisenon, a small village in the Seine-et-Marne department, in the Île-de-France region in north-central France. His close friends Spider-Man, Bugs Bunny and Homer Simpson come to the rescue, hoping to heal him, which requires the retrieval of magic stones. This is the premise of Merlin Dutertre’s Saule Pleureur (also known as Weeping Willow)

Made in 2021 and part of a diptych, Saule Pleureur blends YouTube-sourced footage and 3D animated renditions of beloved pop culture icons with real-world locales. The young French filmmaker was inspired by the phenomenon of Pokémon Go and the idea of iconic characters from popular culture (comic books, cartoons, and video games) literally infiltrating everyday life: what if augmented reality (AR) games became really advanced? 

Dutertre merged found YouTube footage with authentic looking settings, although his goal was not hyperrealism, but something akin to magical realism. In fact, the juxtaposition of the animated characters with real-world setting highlights differences in movement and lighting among others. Dutertre’s explicit refusal of these two realms to harmonize seamlessly is intentional. He is inviting viewers to engage in a dynamic interplay between suspended willing disbelief and awareness of their constructed nature.

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Matteo Bittanti


Works cited

Merlin Dutertre

Saule Pleureur, digital video color, sound, 17’ 09”, 2022, France (voice over: Ayumi Roux, Thomas Yonnez; mixing; Hugo Corbel)

Saule pleureur 2: Le retour, digital video, color, sound,  16’ 38, 2022, France [dubbing: Arthur Blanchard (Spider-Man, Tiplouf), Giulia Enaud (Goupix); sound design: Thomas Debeugny; soundtrack: Allan Fournier]

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ARTICLE: A CLOSER LOOK AT BABAK AHTESHAMIPOUR’S POST-CODED THOUGHTS...

Babak Ahteshamipour, Paleontology of Non-existence, installation shot at Sub Rosa space, Athens, Greece, 2021

WHAT COMES AFTER ARMAGEDDON?

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Currently exhibited on VRAL, Babak Ahteshamipour’s Post-coded Thoughts on the Never-Upcoming Foreshadowed Li(f)e's originality reflects the author’s own trajectory, which includes a degree in music theory, harmony and violin studies and a Master of Science in Mineral Resources Engineering. Born in Iran in 1994, Ahteshamipour’s work with video game based video art is relatively recent, although “it boldly shaped [his] identity throughout early life and since cyberspace is part of [his] broader artistic research”, as he told Fantacci. Post-coded Thoughts’s was produced while the world was experiencing the Covid-19 pandemic, with its litany of deaths, lockdowns, and disinformation. Released in 2021, it signaled a shift, or rather a new phase in Ahteshamipour’s practice.

In a sense, the work is an assemblage of motifs, but also artifacts, hereby rendered as virtual objects. Consider for instance the painterly works featured in paleontology of non-existence (2021) an installation that appropriates and recontextualizes characters from various video games and uses tweet-like slogans such as “It seems, after all, we couldn't escape the game engines”. Post-coded was part of this complex scenario in which various planes of reality - the tangible, the simulation, the augmented - engage in a conversation.

Albeit visually playful and imbued with a distinct kind of irony, the world that Paleontology of Non-existence alludes to is a dystopia. An unexplained “event” has abruptly and irreversibly erased all of mankind, so that Earth is now inhabited by AIs. Equally mysterious is the reason behind AI rapid evolution: left to their own devices, machines become sentient, wondering about the disappearance of their former creators. This new algorithmic age is marked by an existential crisis. Machines are trying to find meaning in a world that appears utterly fatalistic. The new normal, just like the old normal, is being stuck in a feedback loop: on the one hand, the simverse is a replica of the pre-existing world. On the other hand, the avatar - a stand-in of the artist himself - is clearly looking for answers that the simulation - just like a market based society - cannot provide. The puppet has become the puppeteer but the wires have not been cut: free will is not an option. Free will can only be simulated. Ditto for artistic creation: the puppet plays music, shifting from his guitar to his piano, stares at his paintings for inspiration, and shares his thoughts and moods.

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Matteo Bittanti

All images courtesy of the artist

Babak Ahteshamipour, Paleontology of Non-existence, installation shot at Sub Rosa space, Athens, Greece, 2021

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