NATALIE’S TRIFECTA premiered at IDFA, where it won a special jury award for creative technology. The interactive piece transports the viewer through the different worlds of a multi-disciplinary artist (Natalie Paneng), as they explore her physical studio, a virtual gallery and a digital dreamscape: to experience the whole trifecta.
The piece reflects her personal quirkiness and complexities and her artistic practice of using her being as an artistic medium. I spoke to Natalie at DocLab, where we talked about world-building and using new technologies to expand her magical narratives into different dimensions.
Natalie Paneng, world builder
Karen – So, you personally have a lot of worlds and so does your piece. In your own words, how would you describe it?
Natalie – I feel like my piece is a multiverse that looks at the inner world and external world of an artist. And combines them in an experience of travel, where you get to meet certain internal elements, vulnerable elements, as well as dreamscape elements, and conventional real-world things brought back into VR. So it’s a mix of experiences and portals to jump into. And layers of self – every human has these inner dimensions.
I’m obsessed with being a world builder, both in real life and online. I want everything I share to be a travelling experience on some plane of existence versus just a message or an image.
Karen – It seems in that way, VR works for you because it gives you the opportunity to have people have a travelling experience, not just a visual experience.
Natalie – Hmm, it’s not only VR. I’m a multidisciplinary artist, trying to bring that into the discipline, rather than focus on VR. But it’s a great thing to add to my multi-slasher vocabulary. Because I like to do both. I like physical installations and to have people feel truly immersed and have them question reality in the real sense. And then with VR, it’s also kind of giving them that digitally. So this tool, anywhere, in any space, can teleport them into another space. VR gives a contrast in a way to what I do physically and extends it into something different. I use different mediums in order to create feedback and responses within my practice.
NATALIE’S TRIFECTA: premiering in Amsterdam
Karen – It had its premiere at IDFA, where some of the pieces are shown as an installation and some are solely in-headset. Have you thought about presenting your piece differently? Because you also are very into physical space.
Natalie – Yeah, I would have loved to build an installation around it. But I guess because there were so many projects, they had to format it in this way and there was a category, so there’s specific framing that it fell into. But I think that this project specifically will do really well in an installation, because there’s a way of extending it.
Karen – It’s interesting. It’s so colourful, it’s so…there. But you step into this white box, and you put on this very technical headset. So it’s a super contrast between the environment that you’re in in the VR headset and where you are physically – which in a way is good, because it makes the space inside the world feel so dynamic in comparison to what reality is. But on the other hand, it’s quite a disconnect between the inner world and what’s outside. And I think that’s also a reflection of the different worlds that you are occupying.
Natalie – I feel like in some ways my work tries to contrast the world. And tries to give an alternative to the everyday – just by stepping one foot in is like a step out of this reality. So it’s understanding those normal human barriers, like this is reality, it plays out in this specific way. But from this point, I have control on how to present realities, and how to introduce and welcome people into other realities.
Natalie’s Trifecta is an interactive art experience which brings three levels of the artistic practice of multi-disciplinary artist Natalie Paneng to life through creative worldbuilding.
The project is an intimate journey through the mind and worlds of an artist whose practice is centred around using her being as an artistic medium- making use of her body to represent characters, space and fantastical anecdotes.
The project aims to be a way to bring viewers into the internal and physical worlds of the artists process by inviting them to journey into three worlds which aim to represent the three spheres of the artist’s practice. Bringing creative worldbuilding, storytelling and interactive art into one space for the viewer to experience the whole trifecta.
Natalie’s Trifecta aims to be a formula for new media artists to present themselves and their practices in a more immersive manner. The project aims to inspire other artists to centre themselves in their work and allow more people to experience them and their envisioned digital utopias.
NATALIE’S TRIFECTA, synopsis
Sharing about an immersive practice
Karen – As an artist, maybe you share your inner art world and studio with your friends or art people, but here you’re sharing it with everyone. Is that weird for you? Or is it like, “I don’t care”?
Natalie – Interestingly, I get a lot of questions back home, and in general, about how I do things. And I don’t necessarily like answering them because it just feels so wonder-stripping. But this allowed me a better way to control and be measured and have awareness that, okay, in this situation I’m going to share. And so when I did, I did as much as I could.
It’s the best format for me to bring people in. I don’t like people coming into my physical studio, because it feels like my brain is, like, blown up…and everything’s everywhere. But this allowed me to choose and give distance, but also allow a close scale, range and access. I guess having studied theatre, I feel this weird difference between understanding that vulnerability has a function, and that sometimes vulnerability is beyond you, beyond what your comfort is at that moment. It can serve a better purpose. And my work is very exposing in many ways, and in general, it really bares my heart out and bares my thoughts and dreams to the world in general. And it’s not that I don’t care, but I think that it’s necessary to share so radically so other people feel comfortable sharing radically if they want to. It’s good that they know it’s safe to do so and there’s many formats to do so. And I’m really interested in exploring different formats with that being the subject matter.
On XR communities and networks
Karen – With Electric South and other work that’s happening right now in South Africa and across the continent, the community has really grown and strengthened over the last 5-6 years. Has that ecosystem helped in exploring this kind of technology?
Natalie – Definitely. Through Electric South I did my first two labs that pushed the development of this project. They bring as many people in that industry into the room, and then you get to explore a bunch of ideas with different people. You have access to tools and get to play around them. You’re pumped with a lot of information, and then you can refine it for yourself later. They’re the place I would go or reach out to if I needed a network, to know where to go or to connect me to something. They’ve connected me to people who I continue to keep in contact with. So I feel like it’s really cool to realise where the network is, and to use it.
Before this, I was mainly just doing things in the art space, but having this community has added a nice layer to my practice. And it’s a community that sticks close-they are very accessible. I think once you tap in, there’s even more ability and more pathways for what’s happening. From there, it’s out of just your country and space because the network doesn’t have to be in one place. You don’t only have to get help where you are …
Karen – It’s one nice thing about our super globalised world. I actually attended a few of the Electric South webinars and speeches from across the world.
Natalie – The labs are really cool that way. I love how open they are to sharing what people are learning in the room with others sitting in other parts of the world. What’s necessary for these spaces is this open sharing of knowledge and access to resources and spaces. Because that’s what grows it. It’s still a small industry, so it really has to have lots of access points and not be super gate-keepered. I hope and feel like, it isn’t, but I don’t know because I’m inside. Just because it feels accessible to me, does not mean that the space is really accessible. But I hope it is.
She is awkward, complex, and has a quirk to her expression. Residing and working in Johannesburg, South Africa and the cyber village called the Internet. Natalie Paneng is a new media artist using installation and digital magic to birth new worlds and surrealist narratives in which she performs. Natalie Paneng (b.1996) received her BA Honours in Dramatic Arts from the University of Witwatersrand in 2018 and was awarded the Humanities Leon Gluckman Prize for the best piece of creative work. Paneng makes use of both her self-taught digital skills and theatre background to create multidisciplinary digital art/new media art. Through her work, Paneng investigates the role of the alternative black woman within magical narratives, working in Virtual Reality, Installation, Video and Projection Art, Sound and Light Art, built objects and sculpture.
Natalie Paneng’s biography
Credits
Produced by: Electric South
Created and directed by: Natalie Paneng
XR developer and immersive technologist: Kyle Donal Marais
Additional Videographer: Hloni Matjila
Trailer sound: Sanele Ngubane
Executive Producers: Antoinette Engel, Ingrid Kopp, Steven Markovitz
Special Thanks: Emily Paige, Mina Lee, Jason Stapleton
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