ARTWORKS

Public Avatar is a project documenting the relationship between virtual reality and our perceptions of self and society. This installation will allow a global audience to explore real-world locations remotely, and to interact with objects and people in those locations through real-time control of a human test subject. As digital and physical worlds collide, the boundaries between self and other, reality and simulation are constantly challenged and redefined.

Public Avatar is available online on special events during the year. The dates and times are announced online. To play, you need a computer and an internet connection. During these events, users are able to login at www.public-avatar.com. Each logged in user is placed in a queue and waits for his turn, when he or she can give simple instructions (such as ‘Turn’+’Left’, ‘SAY’+’hello’ etc) to the avatar for a limited time period. Users can see and hear what Public Avatar sees and hears via live video stream.

The term Avatar, meaning a virtual representation of a user, dates as far back as the Ultima series of computer games (1985), and became popularized by Neal Stephenson in his cyberpunk novel Snow Crash (1992). It was also in this novel that the term Metaverse (for a 3D virtual-reality version of the Internet) was born. Public Avatar seeks to turn the virtual back into everyday reality, replacing polygons and pixels with a human being in a real-world location, albeit under computer control.

The project explores real virtuality, by which we mean the echo of virtual reality in reality itself. It examines the essence of reality and explores the borders between virtual and real. Presupposing that virtual reality, internet applications, networks and games not only reflect the society and reality, but also predict its development (e.g. Ghost Recon), we can say that Public Avatar explores social reality of the present and the future.

www.public-avatar.com
www.martinbricelj.com
www.motamuseum.com