APOGEE uses computer-generated imagery and game engine technology to explore the critical tensions between current technological advancements, and subsequential planetary ecocide. With the advent of space tourism, spacefaring rhetoric, and the widespread use of game engines for entertainment, the work examines the direct cost of society’s desire to explore other realities, virtual and real. Even with the rapid loss of ecosystems and species currently facing us, a demand for increasingly stimulating experiences prevails. As a result, the widespread consumption of technologically dependant entertainment contributes to a disillusionment which discounts the possibility that such technologies are contributing to the immediate challenge of preserving what remains of our ecological world. APOGEE, being the highest point in orbit, draws conceptual parallels to the climactic criticality of existential analysis in a time where society maintains a desire for the explorations of other realities.
Guy Lobwein is a contemporary artist from Meanjin (Brisbane, Australia), currently undertaking his Doctorate of Philosophy at the Queensland University of Technology. His research focuses on the use of expanded reality technologies in contemporary art including VR, AR and CGI, exploring how experimental creative practice can generate experiential and critically reflective experiences. Guy has exhibited in numerous exhibitions nationally and internationally, presented his research at multiple conferences and has worked as an artist, technician, and researcher on several Australian Research Council research projects.
