Tatjana Tanja Vujinović Kušej (SI): Universal Objects: Garden

— real-time 3D environment

Production: Ultramono, 2015

Universal Objects: Garden is a surreal digital garden full of avatars performing their rituals. It is a real-time 3D work built in a video game engine, enabling the visitor to stroll through and explore the surroundings from a first-person perspective. The visitor is invited to explore hidden sounds, corners and avatars’ body modifications in this unusual garden.

Environments from the Universal Objects series are non-narrative situations, vibrational, living surroundings filled with elements that are either standing still or executing simple behavioral patterns through which the situations become like an organism. The majority of 3D objects, like suspended automata, display minimal ritualistic gestures. They create zones of pulsing play that doesn’t transcend into something else but rather exists in a state of non-narrative endlessness.

As dynamic monuments of contemporary times, where we represent ourselves through digital performative artifacts – avatars, the series takes universal elements present in generic avatars and their typical surroundings and then translates all into dynamic, monumental, yet fragmented bits of digital information that float within the infinite digital space. Building our own doubles – avatars resembles various body modifications such as masking, prosthetics, costumes, all of which eventually result in behavioral change and rituals. Avatars are symptomatic, simultaneously actual, real, present and absent through their ethereal being. With a sense of importance, like that of classical monumental sculptures, they expand in space, while at the same time they are constantly drawing us back to the origins of their own raw, generated, digital materiality.

3D objects are dynamic, transformative objects offering a possibility of infinite performative action. They can re-assemble at any given time in order to algorithmically act – propagate site traffic, advertise, seduce etc. Avatars are our own digital ghosts and fetishes.

Units of these works were made through data bending. This involves converting files to various types of formats, opening and exporting them from various software programs, manipulating their raw data, and then saving them back to original formats. This process always involves elements of surprise, i.e. the noise that is unavoidably generated during these conversions, resulting in sometimes unexpected outcomes.

Within her works Tatjana Tanja Vujinović Kušej explores the culture of play, the poetry of noise and anthropomorphization by using software applications, custom electronics and objects. Through the exploration of the culture of play she enables an alternative, phenomenological experience of the artwork through its sensorial aspects and emotional impact. In her works noise appears as an agent of serendipity enabling new discoveries. Her works are also inspired by the relationship between noise and signal as found in the information theory.

Since 1997 her audio-visual works, digital prints and installations have been exhibited at numerous galleries and museums, such as the Strasbourg Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, the Museum KunstPalast in Düsseldorf, the Museum of Contemporary Art – Denver, KunsthausMeran, the Medienturm International Forum in Graz, the Cornerhouse Gallery in Manchester, the Istanbul Contemporary Art Museum, MMC Kibla Maribor and Kapelica Gallery in Ljubljana. Her works have been presented at festivals, such as ISEA2009, The 15th International Symposium on Electronic Art, Ars Electronica Linz, Kinetica Art Fair in London, the Spor Festival in Arhus, the Zeppelin Sound Art Festival in Barcelona, FILE – Electronic Language International Festival in Sao Paulo and FILE RIO in Rio de Janeiro, among others. She has also presented her work at events, such as the Madrid Abierto in Madrid, Euroscreen21 at various locations, Continental Breakfast in Maribor, and Nuit Blanche in Paris. She has presented her Internet-based works as part of the Ctheory Multimedia’s NetNoise, the Web Biennial Istanbul, Helium by Ballongmagasinet and NIFCA, and SinnlosWebArt.

She graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade in the year 1999 at the painting department and has been a guest student at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf. She also holds a Ph.D in Philosophy and Theory of Visual Culture from the Faculty of Humanities Koper. TanjaVujinovic lives and works in Ljubljana.

Website: http://www.ultramono.org