Salon Editions #1 – ‘The Virtual Salon’ took the form of a part-virtual/part-real screening festival of digital artworks, each relating to the thematic concept of the imagined and the implausible as essential elements of the virtual environment.
The works are screened to a fixed schedule with a scanned 3D model of 8mm bar functioning as intermission space between each work. A virtual screening shows the works in a livestream online, whilst a real-life screening takes place in parallel within the usual Salon Oblique venue, the 8mm bar. The 3D modeled environment is then re-projected within the actual space during the screening itself. The interior aesthetic of a place such as 8mm bar, somewhere known for it’s long, crowded, hedonistic weekends and raucous concerts, now exists in a time where the history which formed that aesthetic is currently no longer viable. In this sense the bar as it appears today exists itself as a relic to it’s own past, a place where the patina of the space serves as a reminder of a time in the not so distant past when societal circumstances were very different to those today.In this way the projected artworks, each of them in some way a ‘virtual environment’ represent visions of imagined, often fantastical places which juxtapose with the 3D model of the bar to present two alternate and non-existent realities, one a no longer feasible past and one the imagining of surreal worlds outside of time.
Salon Editions #1 - ‘The Virtual Salon’ re-contextualises the worn and iconic 8mm Bar and creates a virtualised artificial space and a new cultural body in the net, fusing the virtual realm and reality. ‘The Virtual Salon’ aims to create a space in the net which feels instantly familiar and intimate; offering the viewer a form of communal closeness in their experience of the works presented.
Artists featured: Aujik, Brian Matthew Hart, Chillchill, CKTRL, Esstro 9, George Jasper Stone, Huang Wei Hsuan, Isabel Cavenecia, LT Y, Lucio Arese, Lupus2000, Meuko! Meuko!, MSHR, NAXS corp, SHENG, Simon Kounovsky, Sun Araw, Suzannah Pettigrew and Tra My Nguyen
