The Metaverse Hypothesis

In The Metaverse Hypothesis every work in the exhibition is a hypothesis of something that does not yet exist or of something about which we are not fully knowledgeable and as we know, not all hypotheses have the same concreteness and force. If Anadol’s abstraction appears spectacular but extremely superficial and empty of meaning, another abstraction, that of the Studio FUSE*, opens up extremely attractive concepts and conditions. The audiovisual installation Multiverse .echo occupies an entire room and consists of several screens that uninterruptedly show essential and fluid movements of abstract monochrome landscapes, so similar yet so different from each other. The work, inspired by the theories of Lee Smolin, the first physicist to posit the concept of the multiverse, hypothesising the creation of a new universe resulting from the formation of every black hole, suggests, in the constantly-moving meditative room the fascinating yet disquieting feeling of living in different strata of existence all at the same time. Screens become almost osmotic windows through which we pass with our bodies, to find ourselves who knows where and in what time; concepts that collapse in the sliding motion of those digital bits before our eyes. But if physically the sensation becomes exhausted in the concreteness of reality, cerebrally, these screens are definitely doors, openings to new and unexplored concepts (still unexplorable after all), as well as being pure digital aesthetics, sensitive auras that shed light on us, with the LEDs, all from the different screens.

From this environment, passing into the aura of the Unique forms of continuity in space totem, we find ourselves in another decidedly interesting world, the world of Alex Braga: with the audiovisual installation Automatic Impermanence. In this dark space, the visitor comes into contact with the AI A-MINT, created by the artist along with Professors Laudani and Riganti of the Roma Tre University, to test what we might call the sense of the metaverse, or at least some nuance of it. The music played by an absent pianist (is the pianist immaterial, from the metaverse, or is the piano itself, analogue and real, turned into the digital, becoming something more complex than a mere musical instrument?), the verses played in the air and the transformation of the visitors’ bodies into clusters of digital particles, reminiscent in some ways of the cosmos, in others of the micro-world of reality (the alpha and omega dimensions of existence), all combine to establish a connection with the visitor that does not end in the superficiality of matter, but becomes an inner connection to the infinitely large and at the same time infinitely small universe, an element that encompasses the metaverse, or rather, a section of a metaverse among the possible infinities of the multiverse.

This work, together with that of the FUSE* studio, explores the philosophy of the metaverse, its meaning in the broadest possible terms, allowing the concept meander without any cerebral constriction, anecdotal cage, commercial sensationalism.

Finally, let us explore the last part of the exhibition, which begins outside Braga’s installation room and ends with the works by Anadol and Joshua Chaplin’s drab The Core mentioned above. In this long corridor interspersed with small rooms are the more modestly sized works of the exhibition. Set between a present and a past that relate to each other in order to identify a common future (albeit, often, far from the narrow concept of metaverse), let us look at three examples of successful relationships, in the overall perceptive economy of the space:

Let’s start with Fortunato Depero’s Simultaneità metropolitane (‘Metropolitan Simultaneities’), which in that mature and perfectly balanced futurist style, dialogues with Joe Pease’s video Everything is Temporary, some subtle and fragmented video art, absurd and existential, like the alienating faces, in the urban tangle, of the Trentino futurist. In this work, the environment constantly changes while the protagonist, standing with his back to us is still, motionless, until he becomes the intermittent vertical bar that we see when we type something into the PC: a blatant allegory laden with issues, an elegant and poetic illusion of the Cronenbergian new flesh, the metamorphosis of the electric man, very much like the combustion engine, into the digital man.

Then, the baroque painting of Carlo Maratti is mirrored in the videos on the aquatic depths by the Entangled Others duo. This seemingly reckless relationship was chosen by the artists themselves and tells a lot about them. Apart from the fact that the works, so different from each other, have many formal qualities in common, such as the temperature of the colours and the pyramidal construction of the image, along with the baroque sacredness of the painting help emphasise the sacred nature of the video. The disturbing aesthetics of the Baroque fuse with the digital to become the ecological aesthetics of the 21st century in the final representation.

Finally, Giorgio De Chirico’s metaphysical Piazza d’Italia with Ariadne connects to Giulio Paolini’s enigmatic Echo and Narcissus, a work dated 2017-2018 by the legendary 20th-century artist, but which also somehow relates to Cesar Santos’ Corridor Three environments that project themselves beyond physics, but do not dissolve into the random digital space. Three other spaces that become cerebral spaces in the purest possible sense. Three representations, the first, enigmatic, the second, conceptual and the third, organic, transcending the objective into a virtual realm that eschews technology to demonstrate its prehistory.

Perhaps it is precisely in these latter landscapes that we see the fallacy of virtual space as opposed to the analogue space at its best. Perhaps it is indeed that metaverse to which large corporations refer to, with avatars, gamer helmets and colourful 3D projections, that eclipses the ancient and existential concept hidden in its archaic term, and which the new technologies, with their enormous perceptive power, can expand upon, invading a space that until recently could only be cerebral, and therefore very personal (the revolution of a personal concept is something that cannot exist). One cannot, however, allow oneself to be engrossed by the mythology of post-capitalist society, which not infrequently shifts common concepts and expectations towards peripheral and functional consumer focuses. What is the point of immersing ourselves in the psychedelic virtual reality of a VR helmet if we are unable to recognise the De Chirico enigma, that presence-absence dichotomy that makes the physical space of representation a metaphysical space?