In occasion of the 57th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia, Zuecca Projects and The Ryan Foundation is proud to announce DIVENTARE SCHIAVO (Become A Slave), the first solo exhibition in Venice by New York-based artist Ryder Ripps. The two-part exhibition is composed of a virtual reality experience and immersive 3D soundscape: VRR (Virtual Reality Reality) and Voice of God, which aim to provocatively materialize the digital world. They explore ongoing themes important to the evolution of Ripps' practice
VRR (Virtual Reality Reality) is a full-body virtual reality experience that requires the viewer to become a factory worker making VR headsets. VRR imparts “a socio-economic mise-en-abyme meant to critique the very technology it lives within – it postulates that if viewers want to experience a different reality, they should look no further than the materiality of the device itself” Ryder Ripps. VRR speaks to the tactile elements of an otherwise faux-reality experience for the first time ever. This truthful and physical reality is impossible to ignore despite being accessed by a virtual entry point.

The second installation, Voice of God, places visitors in the center of a quadraphonic, 3D soundscape composed of a flurry of voices – actual social media thread comments orated alongside a renaissance backdrop of Allegri’s choral masterwork, Miserere. The work puts voice to comment threads otherwise buried in social media’s intense and ongoing conversation. Internet comments, like prayers, operate outside the rules of time and space, existing in personal solitude and yet, remain within a grand ether, into God's zone. This work demonstrates the unrestrained power of the comment thread – its excess, its vibrancy, its ability to push, pull and ultimately its ability to navigate a pattern, and to narrow viewpoints. The feeling of anonymity synonymous with the internet remains intact – the kind of verbiage that spills forth from comment threads is continually more disruptive, passionate, even more violent, than IRL. The distance between humans and their devices is especially important. In a world where mind connects with keyboard more quickly than with tongue, what do these thoughts mean when they are given a sudden auditory authority? This piece examines how communication that is meant for the internet “world” shows itself in an auditory one, perhaps, a more real one? At a bar, at a gallery, walking down the street. What bombastic pretense is necessary to make these unyielding comments meaningful, what is forgotten and what remains when you say them aloud? Do these comments still mean the same as the written word when they are spoken as the Voice of God?

DIVENTARE SCHIAVO opens on May 10th 2017 at Spazio Ridotto (Calle del Ridotto 1388, San Marco, Venezia) and is on view till July 30th. The work has been made possible by The Ryan Foundation – focusing on developing contemporary art projects to further art awareness within Singapore.