Serhii Nezhinsky: "The question of reality and materiality is a religious one"

/ Art /

If you want to ask questions about the future, turn to artists, because they predict most scientific discoveries and breakthroughs. In the history of the development of the metaverse (or multiple metaverses), digital artists have found themselves in the role of almost the most important providers. It was they who managed to transform the rather blurred concept of the Metaverse into eidos, presenting the "concrete clarity of the abstract" in the form of primitive pixel gifs, digitized sculptural tables and chairs, as well as exciting realistic landscapes in Unreal Engine. Creativity is the driving force driving the future of digital interaction.

How ready are our neurons to create connections between the drawn world and reality? How is the effect of immersion achieved, is photorealism important for the depth of immersion in the vortex?

Serhii Nezhynskyi, an interdisciplinary artist, co-curator of X-Platform and the Pangram project, answered PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA's questions. In artistic circles, Sergey is known as NEZHINSKY. He gave it to our publication fractal neuropolis from the "Xenolinguistics" series — as an entry point into the digital art space.

Serhii Nezhinsky, digital artist. Photo: Roman Chyhyrynets

PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA: It turns out that the topic of the metauniverse is mega-complicated, because some people do not understand what it is at all, and people who are deep in the topic are shocked that someone does not understand things that are obvious to them.

We talk about the metauniverse in the context of interactivity, because it is impossible to reveal interactivity solely by examples of media facades, which you may already be tired of...

Nezhinsky: Professionals are specific people who get tired before everyone else of what no one knows about yet. The whole problem is in which time you live. After all, the present, past and future exist simultaneously. There have always been people who now live with the ideas of the future, and these ideas become the present when they are accepted by the majority. Thus, the past belongs to the many, the present to the majority, and the future to the few.

In general, X-Platform, the company we founded with Kateryna Rai, is engaged in many innovative projects, we were the first to start working with metauniverses in the Ukrainian cultural field, the first to make a full-fledged interactive media sculpture, we introduced many really working terms, in particular x-art, x-sculpture , where "x" symbolizes cross-sectorality.

Nonart installation Descriptor from the series "Punishment of Things". NEZHINSKY

We create installations with physical bodies and bring them to life digitally. There are quite exotic projects, for example, "Digital Immortality", the MEMORIA project is a case that I am developing with director Oleksandr Shapiro. This is a project of a city memorial... MEMORIA is a super-modern interactive digital columbarium, the purpose of which is to change society's attitude to ritual aesthetics, to the monument as a repository of a certain image, and to death itself in general.

A cybermeme, a cybermeme, a cybernetic memorial is an individual media cast taken from a person during life, transformed in a certain way and integrated into a high-art installation that can be interacted with. In the production of such monuments, both video materials and three-dimensional scanning are used, as well as in some cases specially trained neural networks.

Metaversion of the new world: from interactivity to virtuality

PM: Your work is frankly futuristic. Does this mean that you don't have to count on active, positive and generous feedback from people in the present?

Nezhinsky: When you are the initiator of drastic changes, it is better not to count on universal approval. Society needs some ramp, a technological gradient, if there is none, then the feedback will most likely be negative, because the gap between the proposed future and the already familiar present is too great.

Nonart object Pseudosoma from the Nihiloids series. NEZHINSKY

PM: There is a thesis that pure art can be useless...

Nezhinsky: In principle, a person is not capable of useless actions. Actually, an action is an idea about benefit that has turned into an act. Art is no exception and is absolutely an applied tool, if only because it forces one to look at the world in a non-trivial way, to change the optics, to consider the subject in its new functionality. It gives us the opportunity to use things in a different way, expanding their functionality and our own creative and engineering abilities.

PM: At the current stage, we understand how the metaverse can entertain us, but it is not at all obvious how it can help solve the pressing problems facing humanity. Can this concept be considered a speculation that changes optics?

Nezhinsky: Partly so. But speculative design is not the same as commercial speculation. By the word "speculation" I mean the process when a certain concept is developed in isolation from the technology capable of ensuring its operability. This approach sets a certain point to which technologies will be drawn.

The past belongs to the many, the present to the majority, and the future to the few

Art, whose main attribute is beauty, can work as a scientific intuition. Science is capable of many things, the only question is who visualizes, actualizes and sets a technical task for scientists — it may well be an artist. Everything that has been said is also true in the process of creating metauniverses.

PM: For most people, virtual = unreal. But maybe it's time for us to review the criteria of things, objectivity?

Nezhinsky: For most people, there are no consistent definitions of real and virtual, because these are complex metaphysical, ontological issues. We say that the digital world is not real, but in fact it is made of physical materials used by very real people.

Neuropolis Pragma fractal modeling from the "Xenolinguistics" series. NEZHINSKY

Pixels are light bulbs, information is stored on hard drives made of plastic and aluminum, where "hard" just means "material". If, of course, we equate "material" and "real", which I personally would not do, bearing in mind that materialism is only one of the philosophical concepts, which is also often criticized. Virtuality begins with our attitude towards what we see on the computer screen or VR. It is our perception that is the source of virtuality.

With the same success, literature that provokes vivid images can be called virtual reality technology, but, note, the book is in no way related to the digital world. Moreover, we never deal with reality as such, but only with our idea, which is formed by culture, the same books, that is, with some hypothetical, virtual reality... Let me remind you that etymologically, the word "virtual" means "hypothetical, predictable, possible ".

Art forces us to look at the world in a non-trivial way, to change our optics, to consider the object in its new functionality

Therefore, the question of what is real is a religious one for most people. Note the irony: progress based on materialism leads us not at all to material, but precisely to virtual, informational, spiritual worlds.

PM: What are the criteria of reality for you personally, as an artist working in the virtual dimension?

Nezhinsky: The thing is a Rorschach stain, interpreting which a person discovers only his own diagnosis. After all, a thing is always something taken out of context, therefore, it cannot be interpreted correctly. The task of the artist, not only mine, is to overcome the image by revealing its ontological failure.

The installation "The execution of Lorca. Friendly Fire" from the Daruma series. NEZHINSKY

PM: How important is authenticity, primarily visual authenticity? Many will be disappointed to see the projection of Sotheby's auction house in Decentraland. The architecture and avatars created in Roblox are very crudely drawn. The same primitive graphics are characteristic of Minecraft worlds.

Don't you think that doesn't work in favor of immersiveness? Perhaps people will be more likely to believe in a metauniverse, which from the inside will be something like in the movie "Avatar"?

Nezhinsky: Decentraland is not about realistic graphics, but about communication and accessibility, for which precisely the so-called realistic graphics were sacrificed. In general, evaluation criteria in modern culture is a problematic, but very important point. There is such a phenomenon in literature as a pangram. This is a phrase that contains all the letters of the alphabet…

Virtuality begins with our attitude towards what we see on the computer screen or VR

It is ideal when no letters are repeated and the phrase itself makes sense, but most often it is simply impossible to make a perfect pangram. The most famous example of a pangram is probably the phrase: "Eat even these soft French buns and drink some tea", usually used by designers to see what each letter of the alphabet looks like.

So, if we, evaluating a phrase from a literary point of view, do not know that it is a pangram, then our evaluation will be extremely low and, most likely, even negative, since there is no meaning, music, or beauty in the sentence. But as soon as we understand that the evaluation criterion should be different, everything changes immediately, and the phrase becomes very qualitative, useful and meaningful.

Object "St. Sebastian" from the Daruma series. NEZHINSKY

It's the same in metauniverses: you need to understand what tasks they solve. Most of them are not focused on graphics. By the way, our project, in which we create a metauniverse, online exhibitions, digitize objects or model them from scratch, is called Pangram. And Minecraft for our friends at the Respublica festival, in which X-Platform and I also participated, made an exact copy of the Kamianets-Podilskyi Castle — it was wonderful and by no means primitive!

PM: The prospect of creating a single metauniverse directly depends on interoperability — the ability of worlds created on different platforms to interact and merge. This is, on the one hand, a matter of technique, and on the other, a matter of concepts.

Will this world get the single visual it will be? Will it be possible to have both abstract spaces and spaces drawn in detail and realistically? And if the players do not reach a single agreement? So the bubble is bursting and we're about to witness a massive epic fail?

Nezhinsky: It all depends on what kind of realism we are pursuing. In military simulators, graphics are often sacrificed in order to direct the resource to the implementation of more important conditions. For example, to create a reliable starry sky, which you can navigate by, moving through rough terrain to digital locations.

The thing is a Rorschach stain, interpreting which a person discovers only his own diagnosis

I think that there will be professional communities where realism will be emphasized for professional requirements, and virtual social networks that strive for realistic graphics, with an emphasis on common human needs. And all this will be a metauniverse.

Centaur object from the Fosfen series. NEZHINSKY

PM: So now we are watching the field research phase: where will the market swing, what will the demand prevail, what will the critics say, how much investment will go in?

Nezhinsky: The need for communication will prevail, most of which will be non-professional, general cultural, but with the possibility of moving into the professional plane. In this sense, not much will change, but the quality of information, its volume and transmission speed will change. There will be a greater share of what is now called "immersive experience".

However, for the effective implementation of projects, it is necessary to start with the theory, to define a consistent conceptual apparatus, otherwise it will not be possible to manage the effects.

Big City Lights: Design Activism in Action

PM: This is where we started the conversation…

Nezhinsky: Yes... John Wheeler, president of the American Physical Society, coiner of the term "black hole", student of Niels Bohr and teacher of Richard Feynman, said something like this: "No statement is valid unless we answer the question of how something comes from nothing." Without this understanding, any statement is inconsistent.

Fractal modeling of Nihiloid from the series « : : .:. ::: ::". NEZHINSKY

The authors of the "Metauniverse" project, like everyone who produces any innovative product, will doubt until the line of sequences that preceded the start of the project is reflected.

PM: The virtual world grown by the demand for communication is the top of the pyramid of needs. Architecture grew out of basic needs.

Do you think there will be a high demand for professional design and architecture among the residents (players) of the metauniverse? If real estate in the metaverse has started to go on sale, does that mean it's time for professional architects to start designing for it?

Nezhinsky: The effect of metauniverses is based on empathy, which is possible only if you recreate the environment familiar to a person, so there is already a demand for design and architecture. For example, Titan Esports' CS:GO four-sticker AK-47 Case Hardened design sold for $150, which certainly suggests there is high demand. Of course, high-class professionals in digital worlds did not appear immediately.

Object "Event Horizon". NEZHINSKY

The discovery of the metauniverse is similar to the discovery of a new continent... a new digital continent, a kind of Pangea Ultima, and as it happens during the discovery of new lands, the pioneers, navigators were hardly professional designers, architects. But the need for housing, as well as the request for exclusivity, must be satisfied. Pioneers are always followed by professionals of various fields, and they have already entered the metauniverse.

She was talking Iryna Isachenko