Multimedia exhibition

 

Googlespace is a participatory environment that tries to explore our perception of space between the real and the virtual. The work is based on a projection of a virtual replica of the gallery as captured by Google’s Street View, and questions the issues of the semiotic relation between reality and representation. A simulacrum becomes objective reality into which the viewer can immerse him or herself and enter into interaction.

During the exhibition the simulacrum of the space is projected onto the exhibition space. The overlay of the simulacrum and the actual reality creates a meta-object that seems transformed and thus different both from the real space and from its clone presented by Google Street View. The inability to perfectly match the real space with the one created by the software shows obvious differences. Their consequence is a disassembled, deconstructed space, like in the cubist collage where a symbolic representation and a realistic depiction lay side by side.

Googlespace questions the semiotic relation between the real and virtual space, ‘materializing’ the theories of hyperrealism, and exploring the structural nature of what is seen (with explicit reference to the French structuralism). The simulacrum thus becomes an objective reality that absorbs the viewer so that he or she becomes the integral part of the installation itself.

 

JERNEJ ČUČEK GERBEC is a photography graduate at the VIST faculty. His works explore the relation between the simulacrum and reality by means of a semiotic structure. He will be continuing his studies at the Finnish Aalto University at the Department of Visual Culture and Contemporary Art.

 

Opening times: Tuesday–Friday: 12.00–18.00 (and upon agreement). Until 3^rd July 2015. // Production: Aksioma, Institute for Contemporary Arts