Club 2.0

Club 2.0.

AvantGarden: Club 2.0
Virtual reality art installation published on Sansar, collaborative events
3D graphics, world building, digital sculptures, sound: Tanja Vujinović
Additional assets for the world and avatars: Sansar Store
Production: Ultramono, 2021

Consulting
Arijana Filipić, Department of Biotechnology and Systems Biology, National Institute of Biology
Prof. George Poinar, College of Science at Oregon State University
Dr Vid Podpečan, Department of Knowledge Technologies, Jožef Stefan Institute
Ivan Stanić, curator and artist
Friends from Sansar

AvantGarden Club 2.0 by Tanja Vujinovic is a virtual reality art installation from her series of artworks for social VR spaces. Club 2.0 is a virtual environment that enables us to explore virtual reality as a social space of connectedness, featuring a minimal techno audio-visual set or special events scheduled by the author. It is inhabited by generated Dyson Sphere-like devices, objects inspired by the shapes of snakes and plants, and Tanja’s digital sculptures called Proto-machines, futuristic retro devices that take care of the environment.

Club 2.0 is published on Sensar, an amalgam of a computer game and a social platform that offers its users possibilities of organizing events and publishing content in the form of virtual worlds and avatars. Sansar could also be described as a “Non-game game”, a class of software offering the player unbound possibilities of freeform play, identity with a great degree of self-expression, explorational interaction, without the limits of conventional or imposed goals and objectives. 
The world is full of orchids as representations of most seductive and diverse flowers, while the Dyson sphere-inspired objects float, encircling stars and capturing their energy to be used in the world. As new spheres of the AvantGarden unfold, we can observe their elements form lives of their own. As Félix Guattari puts it, “its chaosmic Universe can be constellated with […], vegetal, animal, cosmic or machinic...becomings.”

How does one connect with another being nowadays?
Music is one such medium, essential for both celebrations and play. Vibrations of sound waves as invisible wires spread emotion through triggering impulses. As a liquid agent distributed among actors of a particular world, it can connect the invisible strings among people, and tie them into a temporary network of vibrant energy flows. This liberating, transcending of the self through the crowd dancing in togetherness is also one form of play. It is a communal dance, it is a primal activity in unfolding, a cosmic unity of sorts, it is an intimacy with the universe.

Hakim Bey within "The Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ)" talks about the parties as republics of gratified desires. Escaping the regular rhythms of life, according to Bey, helps one to discover the real edges of reality. Like in a dream, VR inhabitants experience shifting of reality references. These may seem like temporary acts of anarchist dreams from autonomous zones and a re-awakened culture of free festival with care, cultivation, and love as a driving force in mind.