FORWARD, UPWARD, IN ALL DIRECTIONS
digital video, color, sound, 19’ 16”, 2018 (Ukraine)
Created by fantastic little splash
Introduced by Matteo Bittanti
Both poetic and prosaic, Forward, upward, in all directions is a psychedelic trip inside VRChat, a free-to-play massively multiplayer online virtual reality environment created by Graham Gaylor and Jesse Joudrey. Introduced in early 2017, VRChat has gained popularity in the last few years thanks to the incessant activities of live streamers. Evocative of virtual worlds of the early Zeroes like Second Life but enhanced by virtual reality immersion, VRChat has now spawned several paratexts, including a weekly online newspaper, talk shows, and podcasts. Players create their own avatars based on popular characters from video games, television, anime and movies and hang out online. Forward, upward, in all directions depicts a neo-tribal community interacting through technology, focusing on rituals of a growing subculture.
fantastic little splash is a collective comprising journalist, filmmaker and visual artist Lera Malchenko and artist and director Oleksandr Hants, whose artistic practice examines the nature and flow of information: its generation, distribution and transmutations. Fantastic little splash is especially interested in alternative realities, the collective imaginary, the notion of utopia and dystopia. Their work is situated at the crossroads of media studies, architecture, and anthropology. Established in 2016, are based in Dnipro city, Ukraine.
