2022–Present (Work in Progress)
Hybrid sensory experiences
Research-based projects in progress as NEW INC Artist-in-Residence at EY
Created in collaboration with NEW INC x Cognitive Human Enterprise at EY
Led by Domhnaill Hernon, Global Lead at the Cognitive Human Enterprise at EY and Salome Asega, Director of NEW INC
with Danielle McPhatter & Ethan Edwards (EY Lead Creative Technologists)
and Tommy Sharkey & Steven Dalton (EY Creative Technologists)
Metafrictions is a multimedia installation by interdisciplinary artist Laura Splan that combines extended reality technologies, interactive sound sculpture, 3D animation, and performance. An interactive VR experience, facilitated by a performer, functions as a prologue that frames a series of sensory encounters evoking oscillating sensations of memory and immediacy, presence and absence. Metafrictions explores the potential for hybrid experiences to reveal “virtual residues” persisting in the physical world while exploring possibilities for new materially liminal sensations. The artworks both unveil and create “virtual residues” that persist in the “real” world through accretion of implied meaning and function introduced “inside” technologically mediated experiences that cannot be unseen “outside” of them. The project resituates the physical and the virtual as simultaneous rather than separate, where past events resonate as “ambient frictions” in the present. Frequently working with biotechnological themes, Splan positions “residues” in both the abstract (metaphorical, ephemeral, ethereal) and the literal (physical, chemical, biological). References to epigenetic research on environmental influences on gene expression serve as a conceptual scaffold to explore the impact of past events on our present bodies and future humanity.
Metafrictions is a multimedia installation by interdisciplinary artist Laura Splan that combines extended reality technologies, interactive sound sculpture, 3D animation, and performance. An interactive VR experience, facilitated by a performer, functions as a prologue that frames a series of sensory encounters evoking oscillating sensations of memory and immediacy, presence and absence. Metafrictions explores the potential for hybrid experiences to reveal “virtual residues” persisting in the physical world while exploring possibilities for new materially liminal sensations. The artworks both unveil and create “virtual residues” that persist in the “real” world through accretion of implied meaning and function introduced “inside” technologically mediated experiences that cannot be unseen “outside” of them. The project resituates the physical and the virtual as simultaneous rather than separate, where past events resonate as “ambient frictions” in the present. Frequently working with biotechnological themes, Splan positions “residues” in both the abstract (metaphorical, ephemeral, ethereal) and the literal (physical, chemical, biological). References to epigenetic research on environmental influences on gene expression serve as a conceptual scaffold to explore the impact of past events on our present bodies and future humanity.
As NEW INC Artist in Residence at EY, Splan is developing Metafrictions in collaboration with Domhnaill Hernon (Global Lead at the Cognitive Human Enterprise at EY) and EY Creative Technologists Danielle McPhatter, Ethan Edwards, Steven Dalton, and Tommy L. Sharkey. Through an exchange of knowledge and technical experimentation, their collaboration examines new epistemologies emerging with notions of the metaverse and the cognitive impact of immersive digital worlds on our embodied experiences in the physical.
The NEW INC Artist-in-Residence at EY is a creative tech collaboration researching and developing new human experiences in the metaverse using virtual technologies. NEW INC is the New Museum’s cultural incubator dedicated to supporting innovation and collaboration for people working at the intersection of art, design, and technology.
...biophysicist Adam Lamson is collaborating with artist Laura Splan in a project the two of them call ‘Sticky Settings’...From giant tapestries that present maps of DNA in colorful, tactile formats, to otherworldly animations set to music, their art invites a non-scientific audience to literally walk into the processes our own cells are undergoing every day...
The EY team and Laura Splan came across a joint frustration about virtual reality: When you go into a physical room, you’re a biological, physical entity. When you put on a VR headset, your experience starts, and you're fully immersed from step one. Laura believes our experiences should start the moment we step into the actual space. This idea—how could the experience be more meaningful if it started immediately when entering a VR space—led the EY team to create the concept of “a residue.” This residue is an idea that you when you go into a virtual environment and something is imprinted on you within that environment, that it lasts with you in the physical world and builds a bridge between these two environments and experiences. Ultimately, it’s the idea of putting humans at the center, not just transporting users to a fantastical, virtual place. Because the EY team has worked deeply with artists who are asking these hard questions and thinking about this technology/human intersection, the team is able to build technologies and solutions that tap into this way of thinking.
Project support provided by NEW INC Artist Residency at EY at the New Museum and by ONX Studio
This work was also made possible by the Simons Foundation. Created in collaboration with Adam Lamson, Science Collaborator and theoretical biophysicist at Flatiron Institute, a division of the Simons Foundation.
Additional project support provided by the Media Arts Assistance Fund (MAAF) for Artists, a regrant program with the New York State Council on the Arts
Project Support Provided by Beall Center for Art + Technology Artist Residency for Getty PST ART
