Hyperscapes - Kornhausforum 2022 -2023, Group exhibition, Bern
As humans became detached from nature, the meaning of landscape changed. The once threatening wilderness became a place of longing for those seeking peace and quiet, tourists, hikers and eco-activists. Today, landscape is nature as seen from a human perspective, a place that we always perceive as aesthetic and that attracts us. This development is coming to a head in digital spaces. Here, we design landscapes in video games or in the metaverse exactly according to our wishes and needs. Real nature provides us with an increasingly distant template for this.
The exhibition ‘Hyperscapes – Virtual Landscape as a Place of Longing?’ is interested in the escape into man-made hybrid and digital landscapes. What are we looking for there? And do we find what we are looking for? Hyperscapes enables the audience to enter artificial landscapes themselves, experience their effects and adopt a reflective attitude.
The exhibition focuses on landscapes as idealised places of longing. ‘Hyperscapes – Virtual Landscape as a Place of Longing?’ explores in particular how this idealisation of landscape continues in digital space. Based on the observation that virtual spaces in digital art and game design are designed as natural landscapes, the exhibition aims to explore the nature of these designed landscapes.
The exhibition ‘Hyperscapes – Virtual Landscape as a Place of Longing?’ aims to show the different ways in which we imagine and construct landscapes in virtual space and how we move within them.
