Olympic Vertigo, 2022-2023, VR-installation

Concept and artistic realization: M+M, Technical realization: Prof. Jörg Liebold, Project coordination: Prof. Tanja Schmitt-Fumian, Music: Polly Lapkovskaja, Mikko Gaestel, Sound: Martin Rieger, Metalwork: Michael Ganser, In cooperation with Macromedia University, Munich

The VR project immerses its users in a surreal parallel world that expands the real situation both musically and narratively. Thanks to the VR glasses, you find yourself in a virtual replica of the Olympic Park. However, one is surprised by the peculiar atmosphere and the strange visitors. Pulsating music fills the scenery, with human-sized praying mantises moving to the beat. The party atmosphere also invites the users to immerse themselves in the rave. At regular intervals, a quivering noise interrupts the trance-like performance.

Olympic Vertigo bears traits of a hallucinatory memory and a vision of the future in equal measure. Within its musical layers, in its participation in the moving action, and finally in the inexplicable threat, the history of the Olympic Park resonates. This place has been marked for 50 years by exuberance at sporting events and concerts, but also by an underlying fear of a possible caesura of violence, as it is in the collective memory due to the 1972 assassination. Olympic Vertigo derives a special appeal from the overlapping of digital and real public space, of moods and narratives.

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