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Connor Gottfried - Artist

Eat my Shorts! (Amnestic re-embodiment)

Regular price $6,400.00 USD
Regular price Sale price $6,400.00 USD
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Amnestic re-embodiment occurs when a VR user completely forgets their "real" body and comes to believe that their virtual body is their real body. When this happens, the user is effectively trapped in Virtual Reality as they are no longer aware that they are within an artificial world.

This happens to Bart Simpson in the game "Virtual Bart" (1994) when Martin Prince brings a VR science project to school.  Bart causes the device to malfunction (of course) and gets trapped in it. Bart must complete six programs to escape the machine, which parallels the six realms of existence from the Buddhist concept of "Samsara" (which means "World" or "Cyclicality of all life, matter, existence").

Hilariously, if Bart completes the game, Homer then enters the malfunctioning device, which explodes :)

The title of this piece ("Eat my Shorts!") refers to the self-referential quality of becoming your own self in Virtual Reality and then forgetting that it happened.  In this case, Bart eats his own shorts. To read more about self-referential systems, check out Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid.
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36" x 23" x 6"
Acrylic, wood, paper, Raspberry Pi, 19" LCD, controller, 11 layers of corrugated plastic
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