Chamber of Dreams
Emphemeral mise-en-scenographyInspired by the visionary architects of the 18th Century,
New York media artist Claudia Hart proposes social,
web-based virtual reality as an imaginary non-site.
Welcome to the Doll's House is a live-streamed performance in Mozilla Hubs social VR, one of three held between December 10-13, 2020, curated by Asher Remy Toledo principal of Hyphen Hubs. It took place in The Doll's House XR, a social VR installation by Claudia Hart, with music by Matthew Gantt performed in real-time in dialog with an original sound track by Kurt Hentschlager. Hentschlager's music was created for The Doll's House, a media ballet for five dancers, commissioned by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015. The performance video was produced by Edison Routh.
Ludicy: Parapandemic Connections in a New World
A film by Claudia Hart & Meredith Leich
2022
The Flower Matrix, is a VR environment produced in 2016-18 of a real-time walk-through of a world created by Claudia Hart, with music composed by Edmund Campion, cello improvisations by Danielle DeGruttola, vocals by Claudia Hart and Mikey McParlane.
Inside the Flower Matrix reinterprets Lewis Carroll as a labyrinth, envisioning Wonderland as the Interweb, covered by flashing emoji, the icons for power, money, addiction and control. Hart’s Internet is a commercial stripway, the enactment of Casino Capitalism but at the same time, paradoxically, a metaphor for a model of the mind and a site of transformation. Hart has created a game world covered with pulsing graphical patterns made from emoji, and also from symbolic computer language and public signage icons, conjoined in animated patterns that throb and pulse hypnotically, with five original species of fantastical flowers. This is an environment portraying an esthetic of fakeness where technology has replaced nature, both sugary sweet and chemically toxic in equal measures.