“We decided to create an experience on the need to get rid of prejudices as humanity” – İrem Çoban (SIGIL)

Despite the growing sense within me that creative XR is dominated by a few particularly indulgent markets, a compelling case can be made that the sector has never been more internationally represented and inclusive. Perhaps as a sustainable result of the pandemic lockdowns, globally distributed collaborations among designers and developers has seemingly become the norm. This, along with the distribution of the Quest 2, has facilitated the emergence of new voices from markets that might not be able support their explorations of XR mediums.

Yet while international collaborations are becoming commonplace, they do not happen by chance. The support of institutions remains essential to providing incubation and access to resources that remain inequitably distributed around the world. The Espronceda Institute of Art and Culture is one such institution with the mission to nurture new artistic voices and international collaborations through programs like their Immensiva artist residency.

One such new voice emerging in the space is that of İrem Çoban, who is part of a team hailing from six nations across four continents. Their project is entitled SIGIL and is a mixed reality experience that makes use of VR, projections, and touch screens among other interactive mediums to bring audiences into a highly symbolic, cross-platform labyrinth.

I had the pleasure of meeting İrem in Barcelona, as a guest of the Espronceda Institute of Art and Culture. As a long-time resident of Istanbul, I’m forever pleased to meet others from Türkiye who are working with XR technologies, particularly those working toward artistic expression. The Turkish market has not been an easy one for XR artists, despite a developed and sophisticated appetite for new media and transmedia works of art. Yet despite the eternally rising costs of hardware and living, I find more local artists committing their time and energies toward VR and AR mediums.

Recently, İrem joined a panel discussion with two other local artists, Aylın Taslak and Selen Lun, to discuss their early experiences of working with these mediums. I moderated that panel on behalf of BASE İstanbul for their BASELECTED 2022 event, sponsored by Meta. This year, the event focused attention on the creative potential of “metaverse” mediums to an audience of art collectors and newly graduated art students. The inspiring personal experiences of these three Turkish XR artists presented an aspirational blueprint for others to follow.

After the event, İrem took time to further discuss SIGIL with me and talk about the future of their project.

Irem, thanks for taking your time to talk about the SIGIL project. To start off, would you mind introducing yourself briefly and talking a bit about your background.

İrem Çoban – I’m a digital artist and I have always found the constricted lives and crises that individuals go through interesting. In a society ruled by the patriarchal social order, social screams of the suppressed, namely women and those with different gender identities, are fought to be brought out the bad as it is a means of purification as well as an expression of their inner world. As long as the reality is concerned, it is always important to make the known but ignored visible to everyone. I try to embody the feelings that are internalized in daily life practices, which also reflects the general views about life.

İ. Ç. – I studied at Galatasaray University at İstanbul, where I earned my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in cinema. I worked as a designer at Galatasaray University’s Design Workshop Unit and designed a lot of posters, magazines, and books. I completed my doctoral thesis at Maltepe University Fine Arts Department, Proficiency in Art. My thesis was awarded the Doctorate Thesis Research About Gender Scholarship Award in March 2020 at the festival organized by Festival Istanbul Culture and Art Association. I live in Istanbul where I work as Assistant Professor in the Digital Game Design Department at Doğuş University. Having used an interdisciplinary approach by using a combination of digital drawing, video, photography and motion graphics and generative art, I aim to convey the multidimensional character of the human that is inherent and to mirror all the dirty clothes stored in the most hidden attics of mind.

İ. Ç. – I’ve participated in international group exhibitions, festivals, and workshops in many countries.In the Art Woman 2020 Geo-Graphies exhibition organized by Primo Piano LivingGallery in Lecce, Italy, I was awarded the best technical practice award and the Silver Certificate for my video “Tell me my future”. My short film “Hear”, which experimentally handles the story of a child bride, has been selected for the official screening selections of various international film and art festivals.

What was your first experience of VR or AR? What did you think of it? Did it inspire you immediately to create with it or did it take you some time?

İ. Ç. – My first VR experience took place with my virtual exhibition, WOMEN IN PROVERBS, that I created within Agora Digital Art Residency. For this artwork series, I found inspiration in Mineke Schipper’s book Never Marry a Woman with Big Feet: Women in Proverbs from All Around the World which shows how common it is to devalue women in manifold ways worldwide. Initially created for the Turkish audience, my illustrations incorporate the Turkish translation of the proverb she handles.

İ. Ç. – In the digital sphere, from a perspective that is beyond culture, I humorously visualize each proverb as it is told without any interpretation. This way, I show how nonsensical and ridiculously funny these expressions are in the absence of the meanings that culture assigns to them. Also my work is presented together with the proverbs in their original language, their English translation and cultural interpretation. This multi-cultural and multi-linguistic project is rooted in the communicative potential of both visual language and Digital Art, which connect people worldwide, beyond cultures, and offer new languages for new thoughts. The exhibition is placed within the space created by Metaxustudio within Mozilla Hubs. However, I thought that entering and experiencing the exhibition from a computer was incomplete, and this thought inspired me to use this technology better to create a more realistic world.

How did your team form? Where did you meet and how would you describe the composition of your team? Is it very diverse with regard to background, skills, and geography?

İ. Ç. – We are an interdisciplinary collective of artists and developers, representing six nationalities and four continents. Our team includes VR developers; an architect-designer; a narrative designer; an AR developer; a 3D scanning expert, iconography, character & interaction designers . Our previous work includes BAFTA-award-winning VR; landmark academic research; and exhibitions from LA, to London, to Tokyo. Our collective developed out of an artistic residency at Immensiva 2022 (Espronceda, Barcelona).

Please tell us about the genesis of the project. How did the concept develop and what has been your role?

İ. Ç. – SIGIL is a mixed reality exhibition, which aims to awaken our sacred sense in the digital space. It re-imagines mystical experience as a collaborative journey from the physical to the transcendent, via a virtual reality bridge. In the physical space, interactive exhibits create intimate, cross-platform encounters with the virtual world – shaping it to create a unique, embodied experience for each user.

İ. Ç. – The project was shaped by the problem of existence, the common point of us coming from different cultures and lifestyles. We decided to create an experience on the need to get rid of prejudices as humanity. We chose 4 characters from the mythologies of different cultures who were misunderstood by the judgments brought by the patriarchal order. We developed 4 symbols for 4 characters. I was responsible for iconography, and designed the symbols in the project.

ESPRONCEDA is based in Barcelona. Did the city influence or inspire your project?

İ. Ç. – We designed the texture of the labyrinth with inspiration from Barcelona city textures and some apartment surfaces. Scans and design were carried out by 3D scanner specialist Commonolithic. Sagrada Familla was our source of inspiration for the sacred space, which is aimed to be reached at the end of the experience in the middle of the labyrinth. It was designed by architect and designer Juan Cabrera, inspired by the colors and textures used by Gaudi in the Sagrada Familla. At the same time, one of the video works in the exhibition was created by me using the exterior of the Sagrada Familla and the images taken in the Parc del Laberint d’Horta.

Were there any challenges with coming together as a team to work on a new XR project in the residency program? Was the limited time together a challenging factor or did it help?

İ. Ç. – The time was definitely not enough. Because as people who had never known each other before, we had to get to know each other first and agree on common ideas. This process took almost 10 days. Then we took action to make the project concrete. But the remaining limited time was enough to exhibit only a part of it to people. That’s why we want to continue the project and develop it until it becomes what we want.

Can you describe a few surprises that you or your team has encountered along the way, such as how certain technologies are more or less easy to exhibit, or how they combine with other technologies in unexpected ways?

İ. Ç. – When we thought that only a few people would have the chance to experience our project at the same time as a VR project, we wanted to use other media to support the VR experience, which is our main project, during the exhibition. For example, we produced reactive videos based on the colors of the Labyrinth, characters, symbols and the sanctuary and placed them at the exhibition area. In addition, we produced two video art works with characters and symbols and reflected them on the wall. We also took 3D prints of our symbols and animated them with AR technology so that the characters they match could be seen. At the entrance of the exhibition, we welcomed the visitors with a holographic projection in which our symbols moved.

What is the current state of the project? Have you exhibited yet, and if so where?

İ. Ç. – Our project can be exhibited in its first phase. At the center of the exhibition is a labyrinth – our ‘gateway to the unknown’. In headsets, users explore this ancient symbol of the self, while their progress is shown in real-time on a top-projected map. This creates our first asymmetry – as those in the physical space have information unavailable to those in headsets. The physical exhibition is made up of ‘bridge stations’ – imaginative mixed-reality interactions which influence those in the labyrinth in real-time. Each user is given a unique #CODE, which they use to identify themselves at a station. Every interaction allows users to engage with their energy of the moment – be it kind, mischievous, fun, somber, or otherwise. On 5th April 2022, we exhibited our first realization of Sigil at Espronceda in Barcelona, Spain.

What are the next steps for this project? If you plan to continue developing it, have you applied for funding or joined funding markets? If so, what has been your experience of those?

İ. Ç. – Yes we plan to continue developing it with these steps:

• WHISPERING WALLS: Equivalent walls in virtual and physical space will carry voices – allowing guidance, anonymous expression, and directed tasks such as the sharing of a recent dream.
• LIGHT PATHS: Physical users are given a number of candles to share – or keep for themselves – to light the labyrinth’s darkest corners. This uses a touch-screen interface.
• WEATHER PATTERNS: Kinect sensors and a reactive map of the labyrinth allows users to clear fog and mist – or to introduce it – to the winding corridors of the labyrinth.
• MUSIC STONES: This instrument invites users to play a melody with strange consequences. The melody determines which stepping stones are safe to cross over a ravine in the labyrinth. VR users have to listen carefully to find their ways safely.
• Each unique user journey, tracked by an ID code, could result in the creation of a unique, procedurally generated SIGIL (magical symbol). This could be sent to the user as a digital take-away, purchased as a print, or even minted as an NFT (with potential to sell an NFT-ticket).

İ. Ç. – We are looking for a partner institution to support a full development of Sigil through the second half of 2022. Initially, we would suggest a short, funded creative-development phase, which would allow us to respond to the creative input of partner – and to scale/scope the production for a specific venue(s). We aim to launch a fully fledged installation in early 2023.

İ. Ç. – Our project was entitled to participate in pitching at the New Images Festival XR Market and was presented to the Turkish Entrepreneurship Foundation at the Art Tech Pitching Night event held at the Emaar Art Hub in Istanbul at the same time. Entrepreneurs and investors have declared that they want to experience and exhibit the project. However, we have not yet obtained a clear result in finding funds. Meetings are still ongoing.

Your project was incubated in the IMMENSIVA program that the ESPRONCEDA Institute of Art and Culture runs. Can you talk about how you came to join that program and what kind of support they provided?

İ. Ç. – I saw the Immensiva Residence 2020 open call on social media, applied and was accepted. They provided working space with access to all the technical equipment of Espronceda, accommodation, workshops organized by experts in AI, 3D sound, and immersive experiences, visits to creative spaces and art centers of the city, and hosted our final exhibition.