Everlandia
Or Ettlinger
The "Everlandia" project is a collaborative undertaking intended to explore the private world of our imagination and express it in form of tangible, pictorial images. This collection of images creates a publicly accessible virtual world which reflects the private imaginary worlds of its creators, and invites us to explore our own imagination and join in the creation of Everlandia. The intended result of the "Everlandia" project is the creation of an overall virtual world which could provide us with a glimpse into the sum of the fantasies of its participating audience.
Our imagination–that elusive, private, mental space–is inhabited by countless images generated from within us, as well as images absorbed from the world around us. As they blend with each other, those images generate our fantasies, dreams and wishes, hidden from everyone else and sometimes even hidden from our own selves. The "Everlandia" project invites us to explore that private world and provides us with a series of tools to give it a public expression. More specifically, it focuses our attention on that part of our fantasies which longs for primary lands of landscapes and nature, far from our everyday civilized world. Yet how exactly would such a place look like? Are our private fantasies truly unique, or do they share certain similarities with those of others?
The "Everlandia" project begins with triggering our attention to the possibility that we each have fantasy worlds hidden within our imagination. It does so by suggesting the existence of a place–Everlandia–which does not lie in our imagination, and yet might actually embody its fantasies. Using various manipulations of our immediate physical environment, we are invited to consider that somewhere, somehow, Everlandia is a real place: images of Everlandia on posters; a tourist agency offering trips to Everlandia; an arrangement of a physical hall to look like a possible part of Everlandia; and even souvenirs and postcards from Everlandia.
Our actual access to Everlandia itself is a visual one: through a website and an interactive installation which offer us to view places in Everlandia, and to create new places in it. As we look at the various places in Everlandia already made by others, we would be mistaken to think that we are peeping directly into their imagination. All we can see is the virtual places they could create as a result of the meeting of their imagination with the creation tools provided by the user interface of the "Everlandia" project. Yet it is enough to give us a feel of what motivated the creation of those images, and in turn trigger us to explore the images hidden within ourselves.
The creation tools provided by the "Everlandia" project are just as integral to this project as are the images that are eventually created with it. It is not just about making virtual places that would reflect our hidden fantasies–it is also about devising the optimal tool for making them. As we try to truly reflect what lies in our imagination and create our own places in Everlandia, we are sooner or later bound to encounter the limitations of the creation tool that is provided to us–there will always be a gap between our inner image and what the program allows us to create. Yet this is not a problem, but rather an opportunity for us to further clarify to ourselves what it is we would actually wish to create. This is the task of the questionnaire, where we can take part in the development of the creation tool itself to best fit the kind of fantasies that drive us as we make our own places in Everlandia. We can try to narrow the gap between the image within and the image on the screen, at least a little.
A future development planned for the "Everlandia" project is an enhancement of its possible means of experience. In addition to the website, interactive installation and printed postcards, it will be possible to experience Everlandia through a virtual reality device. The use of such an immersive medium will make the same experience even more powerful: its heightened sense of realism will strengthen both the triggering of our imagination as well as our ability to reflect on the places we will have created based on it.
Finally, in addition to its subject matter, the "Everlandia" project also questions our relationship with the idea of the "virtual." It challenges our habit of thinking of "virtual worlds" as "3D graphic environments inside of a computer," or that their being virtual consequently means that they must be non-real. The "Everlandia" project may employ computer technology for the creation of its virtual places as well as for their experience, but Everlandia is not merely a computer world. Just because it is not physical, nor does it reside inside of our imagination, does not mean that Everlandia is not real. Everlandia is real–a real virtual world.
More info:
www.everlandia.net
www.martinbricelj.com
