Fetishization of technology
Everlandia is an online travel agency that invites you to visit exotic locations, encounter rare plants and animals and experience unusual emotions. But the destinations it presents do not exist. Each visitor constructs his or her own utopian land and visits virtual worlds created by other visitors. You can send the images as cards, print them out as souvenirs, use them as screensavers or get them printed on coffee cups. Media artist Martin Bricelj constructs interactive installations that use elements from video games but also go beyond them. We met him in mid-February at the Athens Concert Hall, where he was participating in the annual convention of the European branch of the International Festivals & Events Association (IFEA), as the organizer of Spring, a small electronic music festival. Bricelj studied fine and applied arts, visual communication and graphics in Slovenia. While at the core of his work there is always a purely artistic intent, his works always extend into the realms of politics, technology, communication and beyond. In his work «Fake Up,» the artist filled the city of Ljubljana with posters and advertisements for a supposed organization for victims of terror attacks with biological weapons. Hacking into the media, he created links that took people to a website where he exposed them to a complex debate on artistic, political and ethical issues. At exhibitions, such as Transmedialle and Ars Electronica, he has presented works such as «Pornogobelin,» a study of pornography, and «Memoryplay,» a visual exercise on the theories of Raymond Queneau.
