The Art of Mixing Realities

Abstract

How we mix reality of our everyday environments with human-made conceptual or physical realities built for highly specific purposes, and how we articulate their respective boundaries and overlap, are crucial questions for many people, including and especially artists. Art testifies to our need to instantiate arenas of existence set apart from commonplace contingencies: by positing realities consecrated to spiritual and symbolic, as opposed to temporal and material endeavour, such arenas foster activities that are determinant for cultural development. Yet the very existence of these alternative realities depends on their specific, codified linkages to everyday reality. This paper explores some of the relationships which characterise the mixing of realities undertaken by artists using information technology (IT) tools. It is not focussed on storytelling per se, but deals with various kinds of hybrid environments which are being forged by contemporary artists, and which are likely to impact new storytelling worlds.