Image Credit : VOG
Chuly?Chuly
An XR video game / MoCap performance (2024)
At Deep Space 8K, Ars Electronica Center (AT)
At Zinnema / iMaL, Brussels (BE)
Deep Space 8K camera
NINC Media
The project Чули? Чули (Chuly? Chuly), translating from Ukrainian as “Have you heard? We’ve heard / Have you felt it? We've felt it,” merges performative video gameplay with choreography to explore manipulative narratives and the embodiment of online personas. It engages with narratives shaped by human-led troll farms and AI, anchored in a speculative story from a woman who once saw giants. Her narrative, distorted by ChatGPT to reflect online misinformation tactics, indirectly guides the player through the environment—yet the discussed cave and giants are never revealed.
This work examines today’s giants—vast, planetary, interconnected, and mostly invisible entities: AGIs, pandemics, secret weapons, and disinformation itself; some engineered and controlled by humans, others self-materialising and shapeshifting.
NINC Media
Deep Space 8K camera
Starting like an e-sports spectacle of public gameplay, the player—through their repeated failure to reach game goals—reveals their mediocre gaming skills. Which, of course, is entirely by design.
This elicits gasps of disbelief from the audience, who then begin to root for the player to finally succeed, sparing them the pain of endless level repetition. But repetition isn’t really repetition. It’s designed to reveal the narratives embedded within the world, evolving with each performance.
Deep Space 8K camera
Deep Space 8K Camera + NINC Media
At Zinnema, Brussels
Deep Space 8K Camera + NINC Media
Image credit : VOG
Image credit : VOG
After the player 1 teleports across to another area of the map, the mood of the work changes - it becomes suspicious, grows confrontational. The Player sees an avatar watching her but only later she sees the human behind the avatar. The avatar has revealed the human that controlls them.
NINC Media
Deep Space 8K Camera
Deep Space 8K Camera
Image credit : VOG
Image credit : VOG
NINC Media
NINC Media
NINC Media
At Zinnema, Brussels
By setting expectations for perfection through AAA-game-like realistic worlds, the project intentionally subverts these expectations by embracing the limitations of inertial motion capture suits. The susceptibility of these suits to electromagnetic interference becomes integral to the choreography. As the suit's calibration gradually drifts, the dancer’s movements become distorted, creating choreography that embraces digital imperfection—disentangling the digital persona from its body and exploring errors as part of liveness.
Image credit : VOG
Eventually, the dancer and player exchange the motion capture suit band for a game controller, inverting their roles. The player becomes a calibrated Non-Player Character, even as the rest of the MoCap body is left behind, while the dancer takes control of the world camera. This deliberate acceptance of technological imperfections blurs the distinctions between player, performer, and NPC, crafting a layered narrative that encourages reflection on the complexities of XR entanglement, roles, identity, and the portrayal of the digital self online.
NINC Media
NINC Media
At Zinnema, Brussels
NINC Media
CREDITS:
Concept, CGI, environment, avatars, animation, motion capture, environment sound Letta Shtohryn (UA)
Voice narration: Emma Beard (UK)
Text/voice processing: ChatGPT, 11Labs
Sound: Lena Horse (CN), Junjian Wang (AT), Letta Shtohryn (UA)
3D models of life forms, rocks and meteorites: Natural History Museum Vienna
Linz team :
Player, performer, dramaturg: Julie-Michele Morin (CA)
Choreography, dance: Junjian Wang (AT)
Brussels team:
Choreography, dance : Marion Bosetti (BE), Dora Almeleh (BE)
Player 1 : Shelbatra Jashari (BE)
Conceptualisation, prototype – IT:U x Ars Electronica FOUNDING LAB
Dramaturgy, completion – Realities in Transition residency at iMaL Brussels
Co-production : iMaL Art Centre, Brussels (BE)