Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’s immersive VR installation explores altered states of consciousness

“A series of spatial experiences that are inspired by trance states.”

Artist and musician Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster has unveiled a new work entitled Endodrome, supported by HTC VIVE Arts, at the Ralph Rugoff-curated Venice Biennale this year.

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Drawing on Greek words ‘endon’, meaning ‘internal’, and ‘dromos’, meaning ‘running, race track’, the installation is the artist’s first work using VR and creates an immersive environment with which Gonzalez-Foerster hopes to take viewers on a journey into altered states of consciousness.

Using the technology to create both an internal and a ‘séance-like’ communal experience, Endodrome bathes viewers in a fluid, hypnotic environment.

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@dominiquegonzalezfoerster has unveiled a new work entitled Endodrome, supported by @htcvivearts, at the Ralph Rugoff-curated Venice Biennale this year. This is Gonzalez-Foerster’s first time working with VR, as she creates an immersive environment that hopes to take viewers on a journey through altered states of consciousness #VFartists ___________________ @labiennale #dominiquegonzalezfoerster #venicebiennale #biennalearte2019

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As the artist describes: ““As opposed to thinking of VR as a tool for escape or for constructing an artificial world, it is more exciting for me to envision it as a kind of organic and mental space in which abstraction and consciousness can be questioned.”

Informed by her own experience of sound-induced cognitive trance with musician and author Corine Sombrun, who has created the soundtrack for the work, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster continues her multi-disciplinary explorations, which have seen her release a number of 12″s as Exotourisme with The Vinyl Factory.

In 2016, she presented OPERA (QM.15) a 3D hologram of legendary soprano Maria Callas at the Ralph Rugoff and VF curated exhibition The Infinite Mix.

As Rugoff says, “Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster has always been a conceptual cosmonaut in the world of art, an explorer of different species of spaces and the historical visual rhetoric associated with them… Her decision to use VR to create a series of spatial experiences that are inspired by trance states opens up a fascinating new territory for the medium.”

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’s Endodrome is open to visit until 24th November.

Photo credits:

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster
Endodrome, 2019
Virtual reality environment
Duration and dimensions variable
Soundscape by Corine Sombrun

Supported by HTC VIVE Arts

Exhibition view: May You Live in Interesting Times, 58th International Art
Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, 2019

Courtesy the artist and HTC VIVE Arts
Photo © Andrea Rossetti