v r $4.99 - Pippin Barr
One common misunderstanding about video games and 3D CG art is that, like a divinely inspired sculptor getting hands dirty with pixel dust, all aspects of the virtual space we explore are bespoke. This is one of the many layers of creative economy obfuscation, with many aspects of these worlds, called assets, bought pre-fabricated from company stores or spec outsourcing sites. Pinn Barr’s v r $4.99 puts this fabrication infrastructure into scrutiny, featuring examples of all 46 categories of 3D assets available on the Unity store, all displayed in a model of the Sahara Desert, itself an asset that cost $4.99. In an Instagram post, Barr mentioned that this world produced surprisingly interesting screenshot photographs. It is in this foregrounding of economic and labor criteria, coupled with an uncanny digital beauty, that serves as a very useful nexus for thinking about how these seamless-seeming virtual worlds actually get produced and populated.
[PSA: Humor is a very real, valuable part of art. I bring that up, because no small amount of the pleasure of this show is its coyly strident one-upping of the kind of Ikea conceptual installation of hundreds of the same objects that plagued galleries and museums in the 2010s, as well as the post-Burning Man selfie-bait shows out in various “wastelands”.]
Creator: Pippin Barr
Link: https://pippinbarr.com/v-r-4-99/info/
Connections:
Ai Weiwei - Forever Bicycles
Corey Pein - Blame the Computer