ART FAIRS: Liste 2024 Special Guest-House of Electronic Arts
HEK (House of Electronic Arts) in Basel is dedicated to digital culture and the new art forms of the Information Age. Since 2011, the institution has been central to the creative and critical discourse on the aesthetic, socio-political and economic effects of media technologies. As a platform for contemporary art that explores and employs new technologies, HEK promotes aesthetic practices related to information technologies.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo Liste Archive
As a Special Guest of Liste Art Fair Basel 2024, HEK (House of Electronic Arts) is presenting three artistic positions that use worldbuilding as an artistic tool, showing interactive and immersive works by Mélanie Courtinat, Andy Picci and Moritz Piehl. In recent years, gaming has become an important field of reference in contemporary art. 3D sculpting software and game engines have become natural tools for artistic expression. Worldbuilding strategies, such as imagining and creating a narrative, characters and an environment for alternative worlds, have also gained traction in discussions around the metaverse. The question of how we shape and move around within these emerging digital landscapes is becoming increasingly pressing. Works by the three exhibited artists present viewers with a variety of imaginative solutions of how we can inhabit these new digital spaces. Mélanie Courtinat’s “Ten Lands” (2021) is a walking simulator videogame with 10 incredibly atmospheric immersive landscapes to explore. “Cloud 3.0” (2023) by Andy Picci is an exhibition space, studio and virtual home built by the artist in the metaverse Spatial that visitors can dive into with a VR headset. In his installation “An Image of Love” (2021), Moritz Piehl remixes reality TV and social media into new physical landscapes, questioning how online lifestyles shape physical space. Mélanie Courtinat is an award-winning art director and artist who views video games as a pivotal medium. Her work explores their immersive qualities, pushing the boundaries of digital realms. She creates CGI images and films, interactive experiences, and ventures into virtual and augmented reality, all crafted with advanced digital tools. “Ten Lands: is a hybrid format that oscillates between an interactive video clip and a video game. Each level visually illustrates one of the ten ambient music tracks from Yatoni‘s latest album. With “Ten Lands”, the artist seeks to draw a new diagonal that links the two disciplines of video games and videoclips. By recovering the interactive format of one and the stakes of the other, the work is a hybrid format in which each sound composition unfolds in relation to a specific virtual place. Landscapes and sounds happen simultaneously. One resonates with the other. Moreover and from another perspective, the artist also made the choice not to always do so. There is one unique entity to browse the ten worlds of Ten Lands. The avatar imagined by the artist is characterized above all by its anonymity. His thick opaque metal armor hides his face but also his gender. Mute, neither his voice nor his gait betray his identity. It is therefore impossible to know his features or the color of his skin. The protagonist is an avatar who wants to be inclusive, so that anyone can take it over. Andy Picci, a Swiss artist based in both Lausanne and Paris, holds a Master‘s degree in Fine Arts from Central Saint Martins, London. He initially studied Photography at ECAL in Lausanne and Visual Communication at ESAM in Paris. His art investigates the construction of identity in the age of social media, offering a dreamy and contemplative examination of the quest for self in our digital era. Moritz Piehl is an artist and programmer with a background in painting, now working in the broad domain of image creation. He engages with pop cultural aesthetics from sources like tabloid magazines, reality TV, and video games. Employing tools like 3D software and AI, Piehl reinterprets these cultural elements within digital spaces, allowing for their narratives to be reimagined and critically explored. “An image of love (AIOL)” started out as an idea to make a 9-chapter tale about a person adrift seeking an idealized paradise of love, only to succumb to the insatiable cravings of that very paradise. The foundation of AIOL, both conceptually and aesthetically, is rooted in a deep exploration of popular culture’s imagery and ideas, as well as the digital spaces that inhabit them. Drawing from sources like tabloid magazines, reality tv, Instagram, reddit and video-games. Fragments of text—news headlines, video subtitles, and online commentaries—refer to an undefined external world, lurking beyond the scenes, commenting, and interpreting the events displayed. The narrative perspective teeters between a craving for sensationalism and a yearning for love and affection. Instead of merely critiquing the superficiality of contemporary media production, AIOL seeks to discover the poetic and sensual qualities hidden within this fast-paced digital environment. It aims to unravel the underlying desires that these images were crafted to evoke.
Photo: Andy Picci, Cloud 3.0, 2023, © & Courtesy the artist
Info: Liste Art Fair Basel: Artistic Director: Peter Bläuer, Liste Art Fair Basel, Exhibition Center Basel, Messepl. 10, Basel, Switzerland, Duration: 10-16/6/2024, Days & Hours: Mon (10/6) 18:00-20:00, Tus-Sat (11-15/6) 12:00-20:00, Sun (16/6) 11:00-16:00, Admission: Ticket: CHF 25.00, Reduced Ticket (scholars / students / seniors): CHF 12.50, www.liste.ch/ . HEK (House of Electronic Arts), Freilager-Platz 9, Münchenstein / Basel, Switzerland, https://hek.ch/
