[XR] NOE | HUMAN NATURE

The extended reality project [XR] noe | human nature is based on an intensive collaboration between the media artist and UAS professor Markus Wintersberger (medienwerkstatt006), the dancer and choreographer Andrea Nagl (Nagl ~ Wintersberger) and St. Pölten UAS – Master’s programme Digital Design / Master Class Experimental Media. It is realised in cooperation with the artist collective “TheSystemCollective – The Artificial Museum”, the 3D artist Jascha Süss and the media artist Catherine Spet. The artistic network sets out to integrate dance, body and performance, combined with current extended reality (XR) technologies, virtually and augmented into selected real places in Lower Austria – urban, rural and cultural space. XR enables an extended experience of reality: the real view is complemented via digital interfaces (mobile phones, web XR browsers and future AR glasses) by a server-based, digitally fed virtual layer and enriched with an additional category of meaning. Specifically, [XR] noe | human nature defines selected landscapes of Lower Austria as natural stages. For these natural stages Andrea Nagl develops dance choreographies on the theme of “human nature”. Through precise programming, these dance pieces become accessible and tangible as virtual performances on XR-capable devices, as an extended space of moving images. The project shows that the choice of the real site, with its specific demands, plays a decisive role in the artistic concept and in the 3D XR integration.

The space of Lower Austria, with its specific cultural and natural elements, forms an ideal layer of reality for the inscribed choreographic artworks, which complement each panorama as moving sculptures. The XR artworks are stored on a server, can be called up on site via XR browsers on mobile devices, and can at the same time be discovered worldwide via the web portal www.artificialmuseum.com and the platform “Sketchfab”. The cooperative project inscribes a new quality into public space by acting as a dynamic “bridge” between the physically real and the virtually floating. With [XR] noe | human nature a virtual space of art information is invented that keeps expanding into new perspectives within the context of each environment.

Above all, [XR] noe | human nature is an “imagination building” based on public participation, which can inscribe itself into any place without limits and thus enables an extended form of experiencing art. Art becomes virtually tangible and accessible, present and fleeting at once, and leads back to the essence of imagination. The building blocks of this museum are the data streams of art, flexible in form, conveying the permanent transformation of art and society. [XR] noe | human nature builds a bridge between real place and virtual art performance. The task is contemporary, and the results can be discovered as pulsating 3D XR particles of art information in the natural scenery of Lower Austria.