Martina Menegon “a point of no return” Interactive Live Simulation, Performative Virtual Sculpture (webGl, Desktop only) 2022

An irreversible action, a point beyond control, impossible to stop, unavoidable, unpredictable. In “a point of no return”, a group of glitched digital selfies of the artist is forced by algorithmic constraints to continuously and helplessly be together and follow a point in space. Forming a tormentous cloud - whose size is randomly determined at every load - the avatars follow the user’s cursor movements and react at any mouse click as the gravity of the virtual environment would randomly change. “a point of no return” wants to bring attention to the idea of care for our digital selves within virtual spaces. As the avatars are extremely sensitive to the user’s gestures and cursor’s movement speed, their very perceivable struggle can be almost interrupted if the user is willing to act carefully and delicately.

How To:

• desktop only
• click to start the sound (the sound will appear if and when the avatars move or hit the screen boundaries)
• move your cursor around: the avatars will follow your cursor
• click to randomly change the gravity of the virtual space and have the avatars subtly react to it
• at every load, a random amount of avatars will be generated. The range has been set in a way that should not overload your computer but, if you should experience bad performance, try to reload until you get a lower number of avatars
• it’s all real time physics with glitched bodies so unexpected behaviours are common! If one or more bodies should get stuck into each other, you can admire the craziness of it or you can reload the work

A temporary and not interactive iteration of “a point of no return” as Augmented Reality sculpture was commissioned by Boris Kostadinov (Scope BLN) for the project Kleiner Gottesgarten, part of the festival ORTSTERMIN in August 2022