There's a bit of everything at "Plásmata: Bodies, Dreams, and Data" (till 10th July), Europe's largest open-air digital art exhibition, currently on at Pedion tou Areos, a former army training ground in Athens, that was transformed in the Greek capital's largest public park.
Commissioned and produced by Onassis Stegi and curated by Future Everything, "Plásmata" opens with a blue lit sign reading "We are having the time of our lives".
This is how Danish artist group Superflex sets the tones to the event: the message is true as we are living in a perennially connected world that allows us to do amazing things, and science is making incredible progresses. That said, the message could be interpreted also in a sarcastic way, after all, we are still precariously balanced between a pandemic and a post-pandemic world, there is a war raging in the heart of Europe that may expand to other countries and bring famine with it, while the sweltering hot temperatures we are experiencing in some countries at the moment are a constant reminder of the severity of human-induced climate change.
This theme is evoked by Spanish artist SpY's "Divided" installation, consisting in a huge, red sphere, split into two halves. It could be a representation of our overheating Earth, but it is also a way to ponder on differences, unity, isolation and the digital reality separating us from the real world, but also robbing us of our social skills. By walking through the light-filled corridor between the semi-spheres, visitors become part of the installation, but also part of a human flow, and enjoy a moment of togetherness.
Seoul-based collective Kimchi and Chips worked along the same lines in their installation "Another Moon": solar cells collect sunlight during the day and that energy is used to project into the sky an artificial moon at night hovering 70m above the ground and visible up to 1km away, a symbolic way to re-connect people after the long separations caused by lockdowns during Coronavirus.
Last year's edition of the event explored the impact of algorithms on our society, this year's instead the exhibition analyses notions like gender within a digital setting, the disability/ability dichotomy, and the human or non-human body and its interaction with technology.
"Plásmata" means "creatures" in Greek, but the root of the word ("plasso"), means "to fabricate", and there are some interesting creatures here, such as the humanoid robot inhabiting an abandoned pharmacy in a concrete shed that looks like a derelict public toilet.
This installation by Dutch theatre-maker and visual artist Dries Verhoeven – entitled "Happiness" – invites visitors to stop for a few minutes and listen to the robot listing the effects of various drugs, both sanctioned and illegal and used for medicinal and recreational purposes, including antidepressants and painkillers, that can alter people's serotonin and dopamine levels and improve one's mood.
The robot is uncanny and disturbing, her voice icy and mechanical, but this synthetic creature trying to look and sound human, makes you think: will this (utopian or dystopian? the visitor decides) vision of the future turn into reality one day if we reach a point of no return in our already alienated society in which we perennially search for happiness, looking for it in drugs, technology, digital worlds and interactions with an artificial intelligence? Food for thought, food for thought.
Happiness by Dries Verhoeven (trailer) from Dries Verhoeven on Vimeo.