When I Am You And You Are We | Anna Pompermaier, Stefan Maier

When I Am You And You Are We

Anna Pompermaier, Stefan Maier

Extended-Reality Installation

When I am You and You are We ist eine Extended-Reality Installation, in welcher die BesucherInnen selbst Teil einer kollektiven Performance werden und zu einer Sinneseinheit verschmelzen. Welche Begegnungen finden statt, wenn wir unseren engsten und intimsten Raum teilen, den wir kennen: unseren eigenen Körper? Eingekapselt in einer gemeinsamen Einheit bleibt es offen, die Beziehung zu den „Anderen“ zu entdecken. Die Performance entwickelt sich zu einer interaktiven, offenen Erzählung, welche die Rolle des Einzelnen zu hinterfragen versucht und die gemeinsame Produktion in den Vordergrund stellt. Es wird zu einer empathischen Maschine, ein Instrument, um durch und mit den „Anderen“ zu fühlen und dabei unkonventionelle Kommunikationsstrategien zu entwickeln – eine non-verbale und nicht symbolische Art des Austausches, bei welchem Kategorisierung, Diskriminierung und Labeling abgelehnt wird. Eine Form des gemeinsamen Schaffens, in welchem wir alle gleicherweise einzigartig sind.

Besuchszeiten im BRUX / Freies Theater Innsbruck:
Fr 15.10.21 | 18–22 Uhr
Sa 16.10.21 | 16–20 Uhr
So 17.10.21 | 13–17 Uhr

Anna Pompermaier
Anna Pompermaier (IT, *1991) ist Architektin, Bauingenieurin und Researcherin. Als Teil des ./studio3, Institut für Experimentelle Architektur erforscht sie die Einflüsse immersiver Technologien auf die Zukunft der Architektur und untersucht dabei digitale und tatsächliche Materialitäten. Ihr Verständnis vom Raum ist phygital, erkundbar zwischen dem Virtuellen und dem Physischen, eine hybride Realität. Ihre Arbeiten wurden bei Ars Electronica Festival, VRHAM! und ADAF vorgestellt.

Stefan Maier
Stefan Maier (AT, *1994) arbeitet im Zwischenspiel von Architektur und bildender Kunst und ist derzeit am ./studio3, Institut für Experimentelle Architektur tätig. In seiner Arbeit erforscht er die Beziehung zwischen dem Physischen und Digitalen. Dabei versucht er ein nicht-binäres Verständnis der beiden Zustände zu provozieren, wo Grenzen beginnen zu verschwimmen. Er arbeitet mit verschiedenen immersiven Medien und untersucht die Materialität des Immateriellen. Wie schmecken bytes und wie riechen bits?

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When I Am You And You Are We is a multiplayer immersive extended reality installation offering the participants the unique experience of sharing a body, becoming the sensorium of one collective entity. It asks which encounter will occur when we share the closest space we know: our own flesh. Encapsulated in one shared entity, it is left open to the participants to discover their relation­ship to the “others”.
The aim is to explore unconventional communication strategies in times of crisis and alienation and, by doing so, to overcome cultural stigmas and appropriated conventions.
The installation develops as a hybrid interactive open narrative that explores the roles we play, how to empathize with others, but also celebrate solitude, irony, and exhaustion. It works as an empathetic machine, an instrument to sense through and with others. It expands on the idea of a non-spoken, non-symbolic way of engagement to overcome categorization, discrimination, and labeling and make space for unexpected companionships.

Besuchszeiten im BRUX / Freies Theater Innsbruck:
Fr 15.10.21 | 18–22 Uhr
Sa 16.10.21 | 16–20 Uhr
So 17.10.21 | 13–17 Uhr

Anna Pompermaier (Bolzano, IT, *1991) is an architect, digital artist, and engineer. She is currently based in Innsbruck where she studied architecture and civil engineering and is working on interactive and performative XR experiences. She believes in an approach against the binary logic that governs basic oppositions such as subject and object, human and non-human, interior and exterior, building and landscape, physical and virtual, natural and artificial, body and space. In her works, she explores the potential of the indeterminate space that arises ‘in-between’, a place that promotes ambiguity and freedom of use, a blurred condition that forces people into a new reading and experience of space. Space, for her, is phygital, explorable between the virtual and the physical, looking at the world not as physical versus digital objects but as two jugglers jostling in the same space. Her interactive multi-user experiences let the participants actively engage in hybrid realities in which the materiality shifts between atoms and molecules, bytes and bits. Her work is implementing different narrative media and XR performative installations to explore how our culture of global interconnectivity is evolving in new technological beliefs and communication strategies. Her collaborations and works have been presented at different festivals like VRHAM! Virtual Reality & Arts Festival Hamburg, ADAF Athens Digital Arts Festival and Ars Electronica Festival.

Stefan Maier (Austria, *1994) is an architect, visual artist, and researcher. He studied architecture at the University of Innsbruck. Along studying, he has gained professional expertise in a range of collaborations within different departments and members of the same Faculty. His body of work reaches from analog drawings, physical installations to screenings and has been exhibited internationally, such as at Bangkok Design Week (2020) or Biennale d’Architecture d’Orléans (2019) and several built projects have been realized recently.
In his work and research, he is examining the notion of virtuality in space, a to-date highly discussed phrase. Thus, his conception reaches beyond the common ground: he is positioning himself in the juxtaposition between the physical and the digital, believing in a hybridization of both realms. In a Deleuzian manner, he is challenging the notion of the virtual in digital as well as physical installations by utilizing the genre of speculative fction in a variety of narrative media. His current research is exploring such scenarios emerging from pop-culture and technology and is based on the examination of digital game spaces, questioning the purpose of domesticity within the digital.