Displays! Pixel dreams come true

Neo can choose, the red pill or the blue pill, truth or fiction, the “Matrix”. Much earlier, Alice jumped after the White Rabbit, “Wonderland”. Sigmund Freud allowed his patients to speak to expose their consciousness.

This or the other world has always exercised a tremendous attraction to people – regardless of whether we hope to find it within ourselves or have to live with the fear of being in the “wrong” reality. Today the virtual version is called Metaverse. Around this universe, which exists parallel to our physical online world, there are many expressions and mechanisms … On the contrary, he and his colleagues invite you to open up to this world. A possibility that works easily, with a lot of humor and perfectly understandable, is now available at the Open Culture House (OK) at the Landes-Kultur GmbH in Linz. The “Pixels by CryptoWiener” exhibit (until February 26, 2023) builds bridges or removes barriers – depending on your point of view. The truth is that the world of virtual art meets here an analog, visual and highly understandable world.

Founded in 2018, CryptoWieners has been active in virtual worlds since the beginning, seizing the opportunity to create, publish, and enjoy art there. Gradually it became more, they took Austrian assets, perhaps even the “soul” of the country, into the vast expanses of the Internet and became award-winning pioneers. After they met the managing director of Landes-Kultur GmbH, Alfred Weidinger, or rather his avatar with a surfboard in the aforementioned metaverse, i.e. online, the idea arose to transfer the virtual pixel art of CryptoWiener to the real world and combine them. “The Metaverse will be our daily life, and we will move in a hybrid space,” Weidinger confirms: “This exhibition is an opportunity to engage with the Metaverse.”

Pixel-Linzer Aug’, Leberkäse and Ottakringer

Pixel images became aluminum 3D shapes with a foam core, which were perfectly executed by a specialized production team. The visitor is greeted with Mondel by a real person from Vienna, Schurli story in pink swimming trunks, who crashed right into the OK on his way to the party on the Danube Island with the tram, driving through the house. The Pöstlingbergbahn takes you upstairs, where pixel dreams come true in different rooms. You can play soccer with the adults in the soccer room, the café is a decent place, including the Pixel Linzer Torte and Aug’. You can feel wonderfully satisfied in a sausage stand with Leberkässemmerl and Ottakringer, all pixie.

All of these worlds have so far only existed hypothetically; You can and can even visit it as an avatar, that is, as a virtual version of yourself. Now, thanks to this fairytale, humorous, detail-loving, and crazy, both are possible at the same time. You can quickly access the virtual world with your cell phone while enjoying watching pixel sausage in your real hand. By the way, the artists were also able to explain terms that might not have been known before.

But there is much more to discover than that, from Kurt Razelli as a backdrop to virtual immersion in entire galleries of other artists and the CryptoWiener ancestral gallery with 200 Austrian originals, Rolf Rudiger, Kaiser Franz and Helmy.

Now that they’ve got a taste of analog, Nessler says, in October they will design a room at an exhibition in Zurich, and more “analog” shows will follow. It looks like they’re doing pioneering work here again, CryptoWiener.

Digital: Low Threshold Option for Artists

As always, there are other sides to things, when it comes to NFTs, many things really grow into a silly bubble when there’s cash gain, and speculation in the room. But making money was and not the motive of CryptoWiener, profits were invested frequently, assures David Lang, better known as Ross. And digital art still makes it easier for young artists to get involved, asserts Julia Stodach, pseudonym Tschuuuly. “Just try it, then you will be drawn to the magic of this world.”

Written by Mariella Moshammer