Hsus approach to visualise the effect of digital technology on the way we perceive our body and our environment is almost paradoxical as he brings the body into a space that is formed by the synthetic, the technological and the artificial but his use of material remains completely organic. He sets his aesthetics apart from the ‘cyberpunk’ aesthetics of the early 1990s in negating the focus on the immaterial mind and the doing ways with the body. Hsu insists on the fundamental corporeality of our encounter with such virtual systems, because he believes that the body does not act as a disposable prosthetic, but as “a kind of interface, a place that connects various systems of reality” (Jeppe Ugelvig in Miguel Abreu Gallery).

He is recording technology’s integration with the body, probing the cognitive as well as physical effects of transformative technological advances on our lives. His work reflects his early assessment that technology was becoming an extension of the human body, which is a condition he concluded was destined to intensify over time. His sculptures contain elements that contain bits of digital data, while hinting at contraptions yet to come. Hsu uses innovative fabrication techniques and materials – particularly silicone and alkyd, a durable synthetic resin – to call to mind bodily orifices, organic matter, or biotic growths. At the root of these works is the question of technology’s effects – whether distorting, surveilling, or life-giving – on human beings. (Julie Belcove in Miguel Abreu Gallery)

He explores a new way to talk about the body that does not necessarily refer to past imaging of it and instead examining his own experience in the world. (Hsu, 2022) In his practice he aims to “get into the synthetic, the technological and the artificial but at the same time to bring in the body as well” (Hsu, 2022).

This begs the question whether the use of new technology is necessary to talk about technology, or whether a purely painterly approach can express ideas and change equally well?

Hsu explains this disregard for new technology in his process with his lack of interest in making art using technology as a new medium, as he perceives the current situation as much more complex. For him, not only is the world becoming more technological, but the media that artists can use are also changing. Hsu insists on staying within the medium of painting, which has been continuously used by artistic movements of the past to express differences in our way of life over time. In his view, artworks created with new technologies lose this connection to the ongoing discourse of the past and therefore cannot express change as radically. His focus is not on the use of new technologies, but on recording how the way we relate to them is changing. (Hsu, 2022)

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I believe in the potential of painting as a medium to visualise our contemporary experience in terms of progressive digital immersion, but I think it is necessary to connect the painted work to a virtual or digital dimension as well, given that the way we approach works of art is changing as well. I feel that through the use of new technologies, the artist can more honestly experience the sense of immersion and the effects of digital space on their physical space, and therefore can use or critique it from a point of internalised learning.

Digital artist Jacolby Satterwhite approaches the quest for true embodiment from a perspective entirely opposed to Hsu's critical perspective. Working towards healing his body internally and externally from ruptures he experiences in the physical world, Satterwhite disintegrates his body into a network of digital worlds that virtually emerge and are embedded in his own joints. In his video work “Pygmalion’s Ugly Season” the viewer enters into his private world that he constructs from within himself. What he finds “are cloaked meditations on desire, human nature, healing and finding utopia” (Lambo, 2022). Satterwhite expresses a desire for unattainable perfection that implodes under its own pressure and gives way for a confrontation with a multitude of utopias. He is creating the landscape he yarns for and populates it with people close to him that are appearing to be fully immersed it this new environment. This Virtual Reality becomes a catalyst to communicate what is feels like to live in his body to an outside. It creates the ultimate transparency. Seemingly subjective, it is based on peoples responses to the question of what utopia would look like to them. Their responses of consumerism, nature, infrastructure, domesticity, religion and philosophy are matched with the floating spherical worlds that the viewer enters into.

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But is this an accurate representation of their individual visions of the future? Is an environment created in a virtual reality ultimately subjective?

According to Hito Steyerl, the viewer of a virtual reality is fully immersed into something that he is not part of. She understands virtual worlds as constructed bubbles in which the viewer is at the center of a sphere, yet at the same time his body is actually missing from it. Steyerl calls this phenomenon bubble vision, in which the body of the viewer is exchanged for a blind spot in the center, which means that he is missing from the scene even though he is placed at its center. For her this symbolises the fate of humanity as she connects the idea of the human disappearing from the center of this creation to a disappearance of the idea of an antrophocene. (Steyerl, 2022)

According to Korean artist Yunchul Kim the present world is in the middle of a paradigm shift, where one era ends and a new one begins, like the ends and the beginnings of a continuous spiral. He perceives humanity at “the “swollen” boundaries of complex political, cultural, social, and existential entanglements, accelerated by the aftermath of the pandemic, human-machine dilemmas, ecological disasters and warfare – all a shadow of [its] anthropocentric condition” (e-flux, 2022). At the periphery of these tensions he views the world through the lens of materials, where objects, beings, and nature all co-exist on an equal footing.

The anthropocene defines the desire of mankind to place itself at the center of the universe,  above all forms of life, in control of every development on earth and ready to irrevocably shape it to its liking. Bubble vision in VR could be used as an analogy to mankind consistently thriving for a possibility to hand over their power “to opaque automated procedures, to black box algorithms, all sorts of crystal ball gazing” (Steyerl, 2022) as soon as they are aware of possessing this power. Steyerl goes even further and assesses the potential of “worldcreation” within these bubbles. She defines the qualities of such an artificial sphere as very limited. Firstly it can only reflect the likeness of its creator, meaning it will include all of his biases or the biases of society that are being imposed on this creator. Secondly they consist of nothing but yourself and “you are not only missing [from it] but you are also on your own” (Steyerl, 2022).

I must admit that I share this view with Steyerl. At this point I don't feel it is possible to share VR experiences enough - I exclude gaming from this statement. I admire the openness with which the artist expresses new utopias or protopias in VR, but I find it necessary to bring these ideas and desires into the physical world, be it in the form of painting or AR. I think the viewer needs to be able to remain in their reality in order to be receptive to new concepts and transfer them into their world, rather than conceiving them as mere realms of fantasy. At the Venice Biennale this year I encountered a VR work in which I felt fully immersed for the first time. It was the work by Loukia Alavanou called “Oedipus in Search of Colonus”. He restaged this ancient drama to reflect contemporary events in a 15-minute VR film curated by Heinz Peter Schwerfel. What was very striking is that the VR experience was recored at a real site and inhabited by real people (amateur actors), who live under very harsh circumstances, lack any form of citizenship, and are being disregarded by the Greek authorities. I felt very moved afterwards and I think that VR can also immerse the viewer into real environments to realise certain realities that must be improved or even ecological sites that need to be preserved. Maybe it could accelerate the general awareness for such issues in society, even if one is just entering these spaces within ones virtual body.

What would happen if a replica of the body is inserted into VR and has the power to affect the virtual scene?

The architect and digital designer Dor Cohen is fascinated with the moving body in space and time, and how related phenomena translate to virtuality. In his practice he interlaces the physical and the digital in thought-provoking films, illustrations, and virtual reality experiences. (RCA, 2022) In Dors video work “Estrangement”, he himself enters a virtual scene that is almost completely vacant except of his body that is being mirrored at a distance. In this scene Cohen possesses the power over his body and can move freely around the space. With every move towards his mirrored second body, its form changes in a deformation that is distorted synchronously to his movements. The digital body becomes a mark. As he is gaining control over the other body he unlocks a limitless array of new moves. He explores the body as a tool to explore and develop movement and aims to exceed its natural limitations and capabilities to enrich our experience in the world. His work challenges the notion of embodiment and opens up new possibilities to think about our own disembodiment. (Cohen)

I relate Cohens dancing and shapeshifting bodies to Satterwhite's video work, in which two bodies can been seen dancing and reacting to one another in VR. Both bodies seemingly want to connect and intertwine. For me, this expresses the striving for more tangible community in the digital space. Both visualise the dream of actually coming together in a virtual but also a more embodied way. The fusion of bodies can also be observed as a central element in Kumbirai Makumbe's work. Their work "Living Doesn't Mean You're Alive” from 2021 questions the body as a site of emotional emancipation along with the notion of reaching a technological singularity. They continuously question the multidimensionality of blackness, queerness, transcendence and “in-betweenness". Drawn to the materiality and malleability of digital matter and the infinite possibilities of its employability, they transform the body to explore future ways of being in a body. (arebyte, 2022) Makumbe explore that what is lost of one’s physicality during a transformation towards progress. “It is a moment of questioning what truly fuelled their yearning to emancipate themselves from the confines of their biological human body. What is the body itself? or what is the experience of inhabiting their body in the context it existed within?” (arebyte, 2022) Their work has a very soft formal language, wafting organic matter is combined with amorphous figures that are held in a common fusion, sighingly circling on floating plateaus. The human has emancipated himself from his body and has ascended to an “informorph”;  a virtual body of information that possesses self-awareness and scentience” (arebyte, 2022). Makumbe pose the question of what could be gained and what could be lost if humanity succeeds in separating mind from body, and compels us to rethink, if that is even a desirable outcome.

Hsu sees us as unable to answer this question in the here and now. According to him, all that can be said is that being human means being in the world and nothing more. We can only comprehend the here and now, and the generations to come who will actually inhabit the future may already have a very different understanding of what their world holds in store for them and how they want to live in it. While we may know what they have lost, they will not be aware of it because they have never experienced those aspects. (Hsu, 2022)

According to Hsu, we are already seeing this shift in the younger generations who grew up with smartphones and the constant connection to the Internet. They already live in a different world where they feel no inhibitions or concerns about the technologies and devices they use. Hsu derives this from man's ability to quickly adapt to his environment, be it better or worse than that of the previous generation. (Hsu, 2022)

I agree with Hsu that the way people interact with new technologies, and especially in the digital space, is very much related to their age. There is a certain reluctance and skepticism among the older generation. The transparency increasingly sought by younger generations is rejected by the older ones, who may be more aware of potential risks, external manipulative forces, and profit-maximising entities advancing on their patterns of behaviour and information. However, I believe that it is of paramount importance not to lose the connection between both generations, in order to facilitate a progression in how we combine the physical and the digital experience in the future, fueled by the imagination and curiosity of younger generations and stabilised and reflected from the point of view of a different lived experience, which may contain values ​​and truths that would otherwise be forgotten. “It is very scary what can happen here,” says Hsu. “The power to manipulate is very frightening. Wether we can contain that power is a huge question.” (Hsu, 2022)

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New media artist Pascal Sender is one of the first artists to aim for this bridge between generations. He poses the question if there is a way to paint that is native to the 21st century and also being able to relate to historic works?

What makes the works of Pascal Sender a unique reflection of modern life is the innovation that he has created so that the pictures can be viewed in Augmented Reality. He has hand coded an app, so that when viewing his paintings through your phone camera, another digital perspective is revealed. (Smith, 2020) His paintings seem to jump off the canvas appearing as three-dimensional forms, moving and interacting with the viewer. “His work never settles, it’s a movable feast of dancing lines, percussive and unapologetic. It can’t be passively viewed, it has to be experienced” (Smith, 2020). It is practically impossible to view his work or half engaged. According to Smith the viewer has “somehow stopped being able to absorb, preferring the definitive record of an iPhone photograph to the data allowance of our own brains. We shoot to remember, rewarding ourselves with a digital record of having been somewhere or experienced something.” The flood of images we collect but never fully perceive is diluting and devaluing each image. Ironically Sender depicts the human figure in even this moment, glaring at the screen of their smartphones, moving trough life in a state of distraction and unawareness. Sender questions the modern world and our need to capture and categorise. He creates work that cannot be formatted to the oblongs of our phones, by using exactly this device to commandeer our screens just to keep us focussed on his work in the now. (Smith, 2020) Sender recalls the notion of two different levels of engagement with his work. Whereas people entered the gallery to simply look at the painting, their “son or daughter had the phone in their hand and they were looking through the phone at the painting because it was natural or they wanted that” (Sender, 2022). He feels that it is getting increasingly harder to give an entry point and to let people in. While the middle-aged viewer sees the AR addition simply as an add-on, a child would not see it in that way at all. It would actually see the work in that moment, because it is able to interact and play with it. “[Children] want an interactive moment, they want to engage with it with clicking, and something happens, and it changed. And an older generation maybe exactly doesn´t want that. I find it super interesting to make a bridge between these two areas, or the two layers of how people consume art”, Sender explains.

The artist Niall Ashley explores this virtual extension of his paintings through complex performances that take place in a dual environment that is shifting back and forth between a digital and a physical world and between his digital and his physical body. He switches between the two modes of existing with ease and thereby inspires the viewer to also search for this new balance in his own way of existing in the in-between of our contemporary existence. (Gordon, 2021)

Whereas Senders and Ashleys works come to life within a new dimension of the painting, Ry David Bradley approaches painting in the 21st century from another point of entry. He paints inside the image itself, on its own terms, which is something that was impossible in anything but this century. He depicts the human face today, acting as the last form of privacy and security, but also monitoring. For Bradley the relationship between the smartphone and the face is symbiotic. The face is one place where “changes can be reflected, and so by using custom-created software brushes that leave loosely evident their fractured character, this classical trope of portrait painting can also capture the highly edited present. And whatever overlays it will continue to be adorned with as mixed reality becomes more prevalent.” (Bradley in Mills, 2022) How can our reality be understood in an alternative way and where can we find the first symptoms of this mix of elements and states? The next paragraph dives into Deluzes perception of the world and how matter can be approached from a philosophical point of view.