360: Melodie Mousset

22 Nov-16 Dec 2018

Overview

In her 2017 virtual reality work, HanaHana 花華, Mousset collaborated with engineer Naëm Baron to create a post-apocalyptic universe where users can teleport within an otherworldly landscape filled with monumental anthropomorphic ruins. The work is inspired by the Japanese manga series One Piece, in which character Nico Robin developed the power to endlessly reproduce her body parts after consuming the magic Hana Hana fruit (also called the devil fruit). In Mousset’s version, users can grow infinite chains of digital hands and build the architecture of their own world. The work is a playful, yet harrowing journey that explores the ongoing multiplication of our digital-selves and the possibility of extending it to the physical body. As the pharmacological capacity to technologically augment our bodies or even self-replicate becomes a contemporary reality, HanaHana 花華 provides a grotesque and beautiful experience questioning the implications on our mind, identity, body and senses