HEARding Cats Collective presents PAVILIONS: Nested Worlds by Van McElwee
Nested Worlds employs augmented reality to imagine six alternate worlds, represented by six superimposed music pavilions. Six-channel music installation by Rich O’Donnell, Visual Structures by Casper McElwee, Augmented Reality by Rampant Interactive.
PAVILIONS employs augmented reality to imagine six alternate worlds, represented by six superimposed music pavilions. Rich O’Donnell performs a six-channel original composition that fills this multidimensional space. Each pavilion is a distinct shape and a different pastel hue. Participants wander a complex space, literally stepping from one world into another. Sounds move, intersect and reverberate through the softly hued structures. This work brings augmented reality and Many Worlds Theory into alignment. Its very form reflects the labyrinthine condition of digital culture: games, the Internet, the Rhizome. As physics considers the Multiverse, media builds new worlds. In fact, World can be understood as a new unit of media, like frame, shot and sequence. As actual and virtual merge, various media become philosophical tools for contemplating the nature of experience. How do we live in a reality that is constantly branching, constantly being invaded by other realities? How does our existence change when actual and virtual occupy the same space? Is reality itself an artwork? (Van McElwee 2018)
