In 2019, ARTE TV’s popular series Tracks profiled two of the most groundbreaking artists working with machinima today: Austrian artist Leonhard Muellner (the most outspoken member of Total Refusal collective) and Venezuelan artist Victor Morales, whose latest project, Rapid Transit: Preface, was exhibited in VRAL #1.
NEWS: VRAL #1_VICTOR MORALES (APRIL 25 - MAY 7 2020)
RAPID TRANSIT: PREFACE
digital video, color, sound, 13’, 2020 (Venezuela/United States)
Created by Victor Morales. Music: Daniel Dobson. Voices: Modesto Jimenez and Christine Schisano. Written by William Burns.
WORLD PREMIERE
Introduced by Matteo Bittanti
What is it like to ride the New York City subway thirty years from now? Victor Morales predicts that most travellers will wear VR/AR displays combined with electric stimulants or lectrics. But the subway itself has not changed much nor its rituals: passengers ignore each other while dancers perform to rhythmless soundtracks interrupted by beeps and synthetic shouts popping out of devices like rings and bracelets featuring holograms with hovering capabilities. On a late weekday night, a rider under the influence boards the train, unbeknownst to what is about to happen.
Born in Venezuela and based in New York City since 1991, Victor Morales is a director, performer, and designer. His practice includes theater direction, video design, animation, text, sound design, and digital puppetry. He collaborated on a variety of projects with Chris Kondek (Berlin), Joseph Silovsky (NYC), Jim Findlay (NYC), Findlay/Sandsmark (Norway), and Wolfgang Mitterer (Austria). Since the early aughts, Victor has been using video game engines to create interactive and non-interactive artworks. His multidisciplinary project Esperpento was selected for the Sundance 2019 New Frontier program and received the “Best Immersive and Time Based Art” award at the B3 Biennial at the Buchmesse in Frankfurt, Germany.
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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.
NEWS: INTRODUCING VRAL
We are happy to announce VRAL, a uniquely curated game video experience, available for free on the MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL website offering screenings of machinima created by artists and filmmakers whose work lies at the intersection of video art, cinema, gaming, and other visual practices.
The program features exceptional machinima selected based on their cultural relevance, artistic achievement, and innovative style. Often presented only in the context of festivals, exhibitions, and surveys, these works best represent the variety, ingenuity, and creativity of game-based video practices.
A space providing access to diverse and innovative voices, VRAL is an online-only supplement to the MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL. Throughout the year, VRAL celebrates a new generation of digital filmmakers and artists engaging with video game-based technologies, aesthetics, and practices.
The project comprises exclusive interviews, image galleries, and an archive.
VRAL is curated by Matteo Bittanti and Gemma Fantacci. Design by Colleen Flaherty.
VRAL begins April 25 2020 with the world premiere of Rapid Transit: Premiere by Victor Morales.
LINK: VRAL