Dustin Wilson / Juridico-Geometric-Ludocracy: Null Boundary

On view March 16 – April 21, 2018
Opening Reception: Friday, March 16, 8 pm
Artist Talk: Friday, March 16, 7 pm

PAVED Arts is pleased to present Dustin Wilson / Juridico-Geometric-Ludocracy: Null Boundary on view March 16 – April 21, 2018. Curated by David LaRiviere, Artistic Director, PAVED Arts.

“Null Boundary” refers to the cosmological theory that in an infinite universe there would be pockets of space or areas of the universe where the mechanics of reality are fundamentally different. Juridico-Geometric-Ludocracy: Null Boundary is a video and sculptural installation featuring four simulated worlds presented in a series of media iterations: sculpture, real-time animation and composite-video. This project proposes these simulated worlds as sites for imagining how political and social organisation might differ in an alternate physical reality; might a genuine utopia be possible?

Juridico-Geometric-Ludocracy is a working methodology for producing experimental narrative art based on the inherently political structure of games. This methodology focuses on digital tools that are designed to both create and blur the lines between worlds: video games, physics simulations, augmented reality and compositing software. In Juridico-Geometric-Ludocracy the potential for digital media to simulate alternate realities is taken as an opportunity to test the potential of reorganizing reality as a form of Science-Fiction thought experiment.

An accompanying billboard project by Dustin Wilson, Some Kind of Brutalist Vacuum Cleaner, is installed on the shared PAVED Arts and AKA artist-run facade at 424 20th St. W. In this work, the four alien worlds that are featured in the gallery exhibition are likewise represented from left to right. Across the fifty foot wide expanse the worlds are separated by what the artist, citing Hito Steyerl, likens to a filmic wipe. “Wipes as a filmic means are a powerful political symbol. They show displacement by erasure, or more precisely, replacement. They clear one image by shoving in another and pushing the old one out of sight.”¹ Hence the speculative, “brutalist” motifs replace each other in succession, one and then the other vying for position, but all the while retaining a technological singularity, a post-human consciousness that enacts a form of gentrification that wipes the familiar.

1. Hito Steyerl, Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War, Kindle book, loc. 189.
ARTIST BIO:
Dustin Wilson received his BFA from Mount Allison University and MFA from the University of Guelph. He describes his art practice as metafuturology: a discipline that studies prediction itself, providing a humanistic counterweight to instrumental pragmatism. His projects have been exhibited in galleries across Canada including SBC, Eastern Edge Gallery, Struts, Skol, AKA, and Modern Fuel.

The artist wishes to acknowledge the support of the OAC and the Chalmers Family Fund. Receiving the Chalmers Research Fellowship made this project possible.

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Related Events:
Saturday, March 17, 1–4 pm.
Intro to 3D Design Workshop w/ Artist Dustin Wilson
Event Space, upstairs at PAVED Arts/AKA Artist-Run Centre

This workshop will be an introduction to the Unity3D game design engine. Artist Dustin Wilson will lead participants through the working parts of his RT animation showing in the PAVED gallery as an entry point. Using free content from the Unity asset store, participants can expect to go through the process of making their own virtual environment. The Unity software has is everything you need to make a VR video game/experience.
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We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country.

Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays.