Why EAT?
The growing sophistication of virtual environments has changed the way we communicate, work together, and entertain ourselves. New technologies allow us to tour buildings yet to be built and play games in simulated, but surprisingly realistic, environments. For the purposes of education, entertainment, communication, commerce and novelty, these media technologies can now convincingly simulate the natural world.
Where digital simulation of natural environments has gone, commerce has followed. Sporting events include the integration of perspective-based, digitally-embedded advertisements into live video feeds—think of World Cup Soccer and Monday Night Football, films engage in subliminal, and overt, brand marketing, and consumer culture has been integrated into the gaming world.
Our installation begins with the question: How have commercialism and the successful simulation of the natural environment influenced our aesthetic sensibilities? Commercial-sponsored, simulated media saturates our lives and challenges our ability to know or care about the difference between the facsimile and the genuine, and between mass media marketing and our personal sense of what is “beautiful.” Our work explores this effect on cultural and personal aesthetics, and asks how the melding of art, illusion, and commercialism will alter aesthetic appreciation in the future.