BREAKING THE CODE

This year’s Inter:Active exhibition features artists using the 1s and 0s of computer code to explore the messiness of nature and humanity beyond binary definitions. It probes the intersection of gaming and art, presenting work made using the creative tools that define the current era: game engines and AI, which are also the building blocks of the emergent metaverse.

Each work is defiant and subversive. The creators are for the most part neurodiverse, non-binary, queer, marginalised and activists, subverting established visual languages in order to address our existence between the physical and digital realms from an non-heteronormative standpoint. Some use these digital technologies to draw us into the natural world, showing us deeply entangled in a post-anthropocentric universe. Together, they point to a future predicated on inclusion, empathy and beauty: a world without borders.

The metaverse will be built thanks to the experiments of artists such as these, but if we leave its creation up to multinational corporations and authoritarian governments, will they even be included there at all?

March 15 – 26 / 12:00-19:30

Take a deep dive into the possibilities of immersive storytelling. Visit the Inter:Active exhibition at Kunsthal Charlottenborg and experience seventeen interactive art installations.

Or try the Inter:Active Specials – three performances and one off-site experience.

Here we feature the work of two artists co-creating with AI to question the data neural networks rely on. In Queering the Dataset, Jake Elwes messes with the male and female representations used to train neural networks to reflect on bias in our data-driven society. Eddie Wong uses AI to fill in the blanks where there is no data. Jungle People combines neural networks with language processing models to generate images from text to create a documentary when no archive material exists.

Here we enter virtual spaces where the immersive environments reflect different emotional and psychological ways of creating and experiencing the world. Lauren Moffatt uses AR to explore how people experience neurological states as if they were miniature landscapes, asking us to slow down and listen as an act of rebellion against the sometimes overwhelming demands of work and society. Andrew and Eden Kötting’s The Tell-Tale Rooms joyfully celebrates the life and unique experience of Eden, a visually impaired, neurodivergent artist, encouraging discussion around neurodiversity and lived experience.

These VR experiences use embodiment to ask you to see the world from radically differing perspectives: a pro-life Christian mother suffering from postpartum psychosis who can’t face another pregnancy; an American civil rights activist fighting against housing discrimination, racial profiling and voter suppression; or a man struggling with longing, loneliness and desire in a gay sauna.

Each of these worlds are subversive, challenging you to question how you would react by implicating you in the lived experience of others. As the metaverse starts to evolve, will it become a purely transactional space or a place for artists and activists where we can encounter marginalised worldviews?

Many contemporary artists are naturally drawn to the dominant medium of the 21st century to create impactful work that messes with the visual language and often violent culture of video games. Danielle-Brathwaite Shirley and Taylor McCue are defiantly creating work in a medium where historically, trans people have been overlooked or have faced outright hostility. Karen Palmer uses interactivity, AI and parkour, to explore how over-reaching technologies can whittle away at our freedoms. Jakob Kudsk Steensen, Matajuegos, Superflex and Libby Heaney use digital technologies to explore how humanity is at once becoming enmeshed in both the physical and digital realms, as well as deeply entangled in the natural universe. Meanwhile, Akihito Taniguchi and Reporters Without Borders are exploring creativity in the metaverse: how do we create art from inside digital environments and can a virtual world without borders become a world of artistic freedom? We end up, in the next and final room, in Jake Elwes’s fierce celebration of play and cultural vibrancy, a queer paradise in a game engine: The Zizi Show. Together these works point towards a borderless world based on understanding, mutual respect and a love of nature..

Come experience 3 performances in relation to the Inter:Active Exhibition.

Get access to one off-site VR experience at Khora when purchasing your ticket for the Inter:Active Exhibition at Kunsthal Charlottenborg.