Voidopolis is a digital performance about loss and memory presented as an AR book with a limited lifespan. The story is a loose retelling of Dante’s Inferno, informed by the grim experience of wandering through NYC during a pandemic. Instead of Virgil, the narrator is guided through this modern hellscape by a caustic hobo named Nikita.
Voidopolis / Kat Mustatea (US), Process Studio (AT), Credit: vog.photo
Voidopolis / Kat Mustatea (US), Process Studio (AT), Credit: vog.photo
Voidopolis, Kat Mustatea (US), Process Studio (AT), Credit: Kat Mustatea
Voidopolis, Kat Mustatea (US), Process Studio (AT), Credit: Kat Mustatea
Voidopolis, Kat Mustatea (US), Process Studio (AT), Credit: Kat Mustatea
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Voidopolis is meant to culminate in loss. Its images are created by digitally “wiping” humans from stock photography and the text is generated without the letter ‘e’ using a modified GPT-2 text generator. The book, adapted from a series of Instagram posts that will eventually be deleted, is likewise designed to disappear: the book’s pages are garbled and can only be deciphered with an AR app, which, after enough readings, decays the images and words just as memory would. The printed book, with its unintelligible pages, remains as a leftover artifact. By ultimately disappearing, the work makes a case for the collective amnesia that follows great cataclysms.
Kat Mustatea (US): KAT MUSTATEA is playwright and technologist whose language and performance works enlist absurdity, hybridity, and the uncanny to dig deeply into what it means to be human. Her TED talk, about puppets and algorithms, unpacks the meaning of machines making art. She co-curates EdgeCut, a live performance series that explores our complex relationship to the digital, and is a member of NEW INC, the art / tech incubator at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York.
Process Studio (AT): PROCESS STUDIO is directed by partners Martin Grödl and Moritz Resl. It has worked for a wide range of national and international clients including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sagmeister & Walsh, The Prodigy and Wienerberger. Their work is included in MAK — Museum of Applied Arts’ Design Collection and has been exhibited at Design Museum Holon, Vienna Biennale and Triennale di Milano. Process designed the official Austrian contribution to the 2021 London Design Biennale.
Credits
Process Studio: Martin Grödl (AT) and Moritz Resl (AT)
This project was created with the support of Open Austria Art + Tech Lab, Café Royal Cultural Foundation, and An Art Company.
