Beautiful New Worlds: Virtual Realities in Contemporary Art

The exhibition addresses the recent developments in image technology and explores how they create a new entanglement of virtual and real spaces. A particular emphasis is placed on the socio-political dimension of virtual technologies. In a tension between illusion and critical distance, different positions examine their application highlighted in forensics, the porn industry, and modern warfare, for control over virtual space is also always connected to the control over real space. Virtuality and reality are thus tightly interwoven with one another.

The exhibition herein reflects different varieties of virtuality. Together with Berlin’s Kooperative für Darstellungspolitik, an exhibition circuit has been developed that makes the entanglement of virtual and real spaces perceptible for the audience through bodily experience. The scope of virtuality herein encompasses simulations, in which the real world environment is being reproduced artificially, 3D videos and virtual reality spaces that create an all‐encompassing pictorial illusory space.

Included in this exhibition was Forensic Architecture’s Saydnaya project.

Installation view: Beautiful New Worlds, Zeppelin Museum Friedrichshafen, 2017 © Zeppelin Museum, Photo: Tretter