Your browser is no longer supported
Outdated browsers can expose your computer to security risks. We recommend you switch to one of our supported browsers, such as Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.
Aaron Huey "Edges of the Metaverse" solo exhibition. Opening: 28 September, until 26 October, 2022
“We are surrounded by both visible and invisible edges and borders and barriers that we often choose not to see. It is our work as documentarians and as artists to reveal them.” —Aaron Huey
Aaron Huey is the first artist to study and explore the distant edges of the metaverse(s): Decentraland, Minecraft, Somnium Space, Roblox, VRchat, SecondLife shape the virtual heterotopias where the avatar, as another self, is the main character of a solo performance. Through the virtual lenses of his camera, the unknown lands and edges of the metaverse are being documented and mapped during a journey of exploration and meditation at the same time. The avatar, primarily alone, walks, swims, jumps, runs, flies to the “other spaces”, longing for the mystery of the unseen. Throughout his journey, he comes across a plethora of natural elements (water, fire, ice, and underworld), yet reminding of the real world and simultaneously interrogating the artificial nature of the metaverse.
One of the Avatar looks of the artist:
Sometimes the way to the edges might be easy and their access immediate, while other times it demands hours of walking, flying, jumping, running, swimming. Apart from the journey and the process of traveling it’s the in-between places that fascinate and drive him to the furthest edges. His otherworld experience is being captured and shared through virtual cameras which function as mechanisms of storytelling. His videos and photographs encapsulate narratives of the unknown and the unexplored of the virtual landscapes is being transferred to the receiver of the stories from other realities. His camera is a linguistic medium and a vehicle of transfer, from the edges of the cyberspace and to the embodiment of the journey.
What does an edge mean? Is it a synonym for boundaries or does it mark a fluid area, an in-between space? Is the edge the end or the beginning? Can the unseen be explored, grasped, shared and transferred? Do the virtual and physical worlds connect? What is real and what is unreal? Is their borderline blurry? In what ways our virtual self differentiates from our real self? While being at the “Edges of the Metaverse”, these questions remain open and invite us to rethink notions, places, “edges”, yet ourselves as well as their perceptions.
Find out more about the artist and the drop "Edges of the Metaverse", via the drop page on elementum, link here.
Installation shots: Photography by Noe Rieder and Noël Gygax. Courtesy of elementum.
