WYSIWYG
WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET
WYSIWYG is a project exploring the boundaries of the real and the virtual world. In doing so, I designed an exhibition combining both real, sculptural work and digital, animated work.
We live in a world with rules. Simple rules, that we learn as kids and that we confirm with our own eyes everyday. Things like gravity. Rules that are a fixed part of our reality.
In the digital world, there are no such rules.
Sure, we can program them and simulate our reality. Or we can choose not to.
Gravity - on. Gravity - off.
We seem to know this world and our reality and have tried to explain it to each other for hundreds of years.
but do we really?
We associate certain behaviors to things simply based on their appearance. If we see an object, that looks like a stone, we expect it to behave like a stone - or like the vision of a stone that automatically comes to our mind. We see a form and a material and we expect to know how something feels and behaves.
But what happens, if we keep mixing our reality with the virtual reality? A virtual reality, that has no such rules per se? A reality, in which something might look like a stone, but behave like a balloon?
A reality, in which what we see is not always what we get?
What happens to our understanding of reality?
The starting point of this project were digital material spheres, which are used in the 3D world to showcase different materials.
To me, these balls are a visualization and the embodiment of the thoughts behind this project.
They represent how we try to simulate our reality in creating hyperrealistic digital replicas of real life materials and at the very same time they distort our reality in forcing it into the unrealistic, digital form of the sphere.
