// PhilippPess
Philipp Pess (*1987 ) creates virtual reproductions of dantesque scenarios, as well as reenactments of infernal landscapes. Areas are photographed in their entirety, meter by meter, and rearranged in a virtual 3D-Model. The resulting scenarios, made out of the original 3D-Scans, analog and digital photographies and also smart phone material, are then filmed or photographed with a virtual camera within the 3D-simulation and subsequently completed with digitally drawn intervening elements creating picturesque mixed media collages. In his photographs and videos, the artist often incorporates ironic self-portraits that guide viewers through digital hell.
Furthermore, his works aim to generate depoliticized substitute worlds which are detached from respective relations of life and power of the visualized scene but also point a finger at current global events. The ductus of landscape as a construct of politically shaped and subjective perception transforms into a virtual simulation of landscape, while presentation mechanisms of reality and its manifestations lead to the creation of surrogates.
OF EGO
The concurrent presence of everything created, as the medieval theologians have taught, is HELL. Under these auspices, the Internet can be understood as a place of world blockage, as a digital hell.
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The proliferation logic of the web contributes to the fact that every data entry receives eternity values. During the infancy of the Internet the scientific community saw an indicator for the growing world knowledge in the swelling of stored information. Now it appears as if dull sense, baseness and superstition expand to much bigger value than actual information.
In addition, systematic forgeries and disinformation cause waves of excitement.Marketing and/or government organizations bring forward how one can use these quakes in the social networks for propaganda.
As a sum up of everything above presented, Pess has created a virtual reenactments of infernal landscapes.Areas are photographed in their entirety, meter by meter, and rearranged in a virtual 3D-Model. The resulting scenarios, made out of the original 3D-Scans, photographies and also found footage from the Web, are then filmed or photographed with a virtual camera within the 3D-simulation and subsequently completed with digitally drawn intervening elements.
The psyche serves as an individual instrument that allows viewers to align the subject shown in the works with images already internalized in their consciousness, thus individually shaping the readability of the work. Rather than generating a visual experience of landscape, the works offer space for change and provide space to absorb something new. The subconscious and subjective sensa- tions when viewing a landscape utopia become the central theme of the works, which correlate three-dimensional and photographic fragments of landscape in virtual space using digital means.
