Preliminary sketch for Virtual Lands 2.o made December 2021
The development of this installation began gradually from 2019 onwards, with each element of the installation worked on step-by-step. These sketches mark different stages of the process.
Gazing into the looking-glass of virtual worlds tells us many things about ourselves. The sign systems of the offline world are reflected back to us in condensed form, giving us more perspective and making semiotic systems more readily apparent to us. The looking-glass of computer screens also functions as cameras, continuously mediating all experiences and recording them when desired.
- Betsy Book
Font
Fonseca Grande Extrude
By Studio Nasir Udin
We have entered the digital age. And the digital age has entered us. We are no longer the same people we once were. For better or worse.
We no longer think, talk, listen, see the same way.
Nor do we write, photograph, or even make love the same way.
- Fred Ritchin
Final installation plans at scale and
cost estimate based on square meter for producing the final Lightbox exhibited in the show.
Presentation held for Museum curators, November 2022
Through the malleability of the digital language, we have continued the photographic tradition in digital media. This tradition, anchored in the observational representation of reality, thrives despite the widespread critical rejection of new media. On the whole, digital representation bears “the truth” no more or less than its photographic precursor. [,,,,] Nevertheless, people do tend to trust photography more, partially because of the established realist discourse surrounding it. This is evidenced by the number of camera and lens effects seen in purely digital media today. To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, photography bas become the message of the digital medium - stylistic content that signifies reality and truth in a represented object.
- Adam Slight
Virtual Lands 2.0 #1 and #2, from Virtual Lands 2.0 (2019/2022)
Archival Pigment Transparencies in Lightbox
2500x1500mm
A double-sided LED lightbox at 2500x1500mm with prints on a backlit material and programmed lighting, suspended from the ceiling. Pictures from Virtual Lands 2.0, photographic reconstructions of game worlds found in open-world ‘sandbox’ and ‘walking simulator’-type of games where gamers explore virtual realities and landscapes using pathways and hiking trails in the same way we use paths and trails to traverse landscapes in our physical reality.
The photographs used in Virtual Lands 2.0 were made during hikes and walks conducted throughout the summer of 2019 but were processed during an intensive period in the summer of 2022. The project and the resulting images are a continuation on my BA degree work, Virtual Lands. In Virtual Lands 2.0 I decided to over-exaggerate the post-processing of the photographs and experiment how far I could push the processing while still retaining some aspect of the photographic. Each final processed photograph is a seven-layered High Dynamic Range composite that has been post-processed in Adobe Photoshop.
Behind-the scenes footage from 2019 while conducting fieldwork for Virtual Lands 2.0 in different locations and nature reserves throughout Southwestern Finland.
2019 Re-print of Virtual Lands (2016) and re-discovering the processing made to the original series.
Post-processing steps in Adobe Photoshop, conducted over a two-week period and late intermittently throughout the summer in 2022.
The processing resulted in 216 processed photographs that were edited down to a selection of 106 under the title ‘Virtual Lands 2.0’.
Lightbox experiments on a lightbox built using a custom-sized aluminium picture frame, RGB LED lights trips, super glue, tin foil and duct tape. This was to compare the two printing materials and methods available to me and see how the different qualities of light, both internal and external to the lightbox itself, affect the images.
Producing the Virtual Lands-series as a large-scale LED lightbox was an idea that I had as early as the first iteration of the series back in 2016.
However, due to limitations, I was unable to pursue this idea and produce the prints as lightboxes. Instead Virtual Lands (2016) is made as digital C-type prints on Kodak Endura Metallic paper instead.
This time, I have the means and the opportunity to produce a large-scale life-sized lightbox. In the years since, the original concept was adapted to be double-sided and feature animated lighting to create a more immersive affect that I hope you enjoy. I also built a small-scale lightbox for documentation. The large-scale Lightbox was originally sized as 2660mmx1500mm but was later reduced due to budget and discussions were had on whether to include animated light sequences or not.
The images were also proofed by Artproof for use in a 5000K LED lightbox, which changed the final colour tones and hues from the original files processed during the summer of 2022.
After Holmberg #1, from Wish You Were Here, (2019/2022)
Archival Pigment on Canvas, Picture Frame Light and Object Label
187x105mm, 170mm, 150x100mm
A 187x105mm archival pigment print on Hahnemuhle or Permajet canvas in gold-lacquered wood frame hung from the ceiling beside the lightbox, with an object label and picture frame light. The picture is an in-game photograph made in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, a videogame that stylistically borrows and references the tradition of 19th century landscape painting, a genre that continues to inform landscape imagery and photography today. The pictures specifically reference paintings by Werner Holmberg and borrow from Holmberg’s compositions, lighting and subject choice, and plays on the conventions used to present landscape paintings in cultural institutions.
The Wish you were here-project as originally conceptualised in 2019 and I have incrementally expanded and added to the series in the interim years. The concept and installation of the series was developed in 2022 under advice of others. The series pays homage and plays with the legacies of 19th century landscape painting by bringing together landscape photography, video games, tourism imagery and what I’ve come to lovingly call “charity shop art” or “flea market art”.
Faced with the invention of photography, French painter Paul Delaroche is supposed to have declared, “from today, painting is dead!”. Now, a little over 150 years later, everyone seems to want to talk about photography’s own death.
Edit or selection of in-game photographs used for the Wish you were here-series, used to create the After-titled works.
Material tests with different types of varnishes
After Holmberg #2 and
After Friedrich #1
Different printing types of the final image, along with varnish tests.
Tests of the object label on different types of capa or foamboard and on glossy and matte paper. The layout and design of the label followed guidelines provided by the Getty Institute and the V&A on accessible interpretative materials in museum galleries.
Each of these images has become a myth and has condensed numerous speeches. It has surpassed the individual circumstance that produced it; it no longer speaks of that single character or of these characters, but expresses concepts. It is unique, but at the same time it refers to other images that preceded it or that, in imitation, have followed it. Each of these photographs seems a film we have seen and refer to other films that had seen it. Sometimes it isn’t a photograph but a painting, or a poster.
Tools of Visuality: A Family Tree of Technologies (2019/2022/2023)
Fake plants, recycled PlayStation 4 and Canon EOS 7D
Work-in-Progress
A sculptural installation constructed from artificial flora, a dismantled PlayStation 4 and Canon EOS 7D, with accessories such as chargers, cables, controllers and more. The aim is to make it seem as though the 2D virtual worlds emerge and merge with the 3D physical world, creating a link or bridge between realities while contextualising the other works as co-existing in a shared liminal space. The installation would be placed on and around the lightbox, seemingly enveloping it. This installation is a “family tree” of not only technologies but also cultures, creating a branching structure of how techno-cultural forms are rooted and branched into others.
The floral installation was originally conceptualised in 2019 but lay undeveloped as physical body of work until 2022. While the materials were prepared beforehand, the final construction and installation will occur on-site in the exhibition space.
Again, rather than emphasising a difference between our newer digital interactive media and a certain conception of photography, a wider view of photography’s history,
indeed a different history, comes to light.
- Martin Lister
Construction phases and materials used for building the vines and for dismantling and reconstructing the de-commissioned Canon EOS 7D and PlayStation 4 used in the structure.
An Untitled Sampled Soundscape, Looped (2022/2023)
Sound Installation on Headphones
A sound installation through headphones or a sound shower, installed from the ceiling near the llightbox. The sounds are sourced from game files of videogames that use walking and environmental design in conjunction with game narrative. The soundscapes will create a sonic walk through four environments: a mountainous region into a cave system and through a forested area, ending by the coast. The soundscape was made as Sandelin&Sandelin collaboration with my brother, Oscar Sandelin
I’ve always been fascinated by combining photography with sound and so the concept of combining photographic works with a soundscape has persisted for a considerable time. It was only with the installation that I had a reason for intentionally combining the two into a viewing experience where the purpose, concept and execution suited each other.
One of the base audio files titled ‘witcher_audio_forest_1.mp3’,
sourced from Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt
The base audio track with no transitions from the track’s end to where it restarts
Project files in Audacity - the first two show the main loops with layered sounds such as the water, additional winds, bird calls and leaves rustling.
The later two show the “short loop” which is just over 5 minutes long and the “long” loop which is just over 58 minutes long and played in the exhibition.
The so-called short loop. This version is just over 5 minutes long and includes the base track repeated four times with four transitions (Project file below)
The long loops runs just over 58 minutes and repeats the base track and transitions throughout. This loops is exhibited in the installation so that listeners have a minimal likelihood of hearing the skip that can occur between the track ending and beginning.
The scent component was an idea that I’ve considered for an extensive period of time but had not discovered a reasonable, reliable and affordable method of delivering the experience. It was only once I discovered the AI-generated scent profile service at NoOrdinary Scent that I began seriously considering the concept and its possibility. Due to museum conservator’s rightful and justified concerns on introducing volatile organic compounds (VOC’s) into a climate-controlled space where fragile and vulnerable photographic material is exhibited, I decided to remove the installation’s scent component and save it for a later time.
The scent is a combination of two perfumes produced using a text-promoted AI generator that combines three photographs to generate a scent profile that is then made into a custom perfume. The images used to generate the scent profiles are extracts from Virtual Lands (2016).
Games are spaces of experience as much as entertainment.
It shouldn’t surprise us that the photographic gaze, that eye for composition and purely visual aesthetic, finds ample opportunity for snapshots in these virtual spaces.
As a late addition, and motivated by questions regarding how I would guide the viewer through the installation using text, I decided to produce a brochure that viewers could take with them.
The brochure takes inspiration from 1940’s and more recent tourist brochures both in vocabulary, layout and content. This is done to make sure that the brochure, as a supplementary material, was thematically and conceptually consistent with the overall themes of the installation and with my research project.
Welcome to Uncanny Valley explores intersections between photography and videogames; blending sight, sound, and touch to create an immersive holistic, multi-sensorial experience. The project questions separations of nature and culture, technology, art and media and history, discourse and practice through hyperreal, hybrid landscapes where photography and videogames converge and meld into each other. The body of works presented together play on the histories, conventions and discourses surrounding art and photography, suggesting that they are all part of a continuum that continues to influence how landscape is constructed and shape how we perceive and construct our realities and images of them. The work invites viewers to question their perceptions and conceptions of photographic realism and discover ways of experiencing environments that are simultaneously physical and virtual. The works lead the viewer on an adventure through the uncanny valley and through the confusion and wonder felt when discovering a new world.
The project is part of a long-term research project that attempts to answer the question:
‘What do we mean when we describe videogames as “photo-realistic”? Looking beyond their technologies, how do computer videogames relate to photography and influence the uses of photographic media and techniques? If videogames appropriate and use visual and pictorial qualities of photographies; do they also reframe the medium’s cultural connotations, practices, cultures and identity? And can we, by examining these intersections, understand the role photographies play in contemporary visual culture?
Videogames have become part of mainstream culture, with photo-realistic graphics increasing in prevalence and popularity. An ever-increasing number of videogames incorporate photographic methods of image-making and looking as in-world tools or as a dedicated Photo Mode. While photography and videogames are highly distinct media, they are also shaped by shared histories rooted in art and culture, science, and technology.
Welcome to Uncanny Valley attempts to find historical and contemporary connections and discover ways that photographs shape videogames and how videogames can be used to shape photographic experiences. The project borrows from open-world and “walking simulator” games such as Firewatch, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, The Elder Scrolls IV: Skyrim, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and What Remains of Edith Finch. The pathways, footpaths, and hiking trails in Welcome to Uncanny Valley reference both real-world hiking trails and their virtual counterparts. The project also plays with works by other artists and thinkers, including Marcel Duchamp, Jeff Wall, Bita Razavi, Werner Holmberg, Hamish Fulton, Kent Sheeley, Sherrie Levine, Benoit Paille, Robert Rauschenberg, Stephen Shore and Cindy Sherman.
