"With the technology of virtual reality we open up new dimensions, digital worlds, spaces that give us the opportunity to escape from real life. We flirt with avatars, through which we can playfully be who we are without consequences, and do what we want. We have opened the door to a new era in which, like Columbus, we become explorers, plunging ourselves into a great adventure from which we don't know where it leads us. A technique that seems to bring a lot of positive and relieving things to human beings on infinite levels, or that achieves security and physical healing in an incredible way, maybe even becomes a fountain of youth and gives us a virtual eternal life. So it lures us more and more away from our natural being. We are lonely creeping, uncoupling ourselves from nature, although we are a part of it. Are we in the process of forming a new divine power? A digital God? A new digital religion? A new digital nature? Is our fascination with the artificial so strong and excessive that we are about to create a new species?
The idea of ULTIMATE.NOW is simple: touch! No more and no less. In connection with this modern technology I want to put people in the foreground as physical and not as avatars. Being in the virtual space I feel with one hand the body of the other person in order to create with the second hand an image of the person standing in front of me. It is about this so important and natural human need to touch. What remains is an individual image of light in digital space. But we carry the physical experience as a memory, as a feeling within us. An ability that makes us human. It is beautiful to see with how much joy people meet each other and go on with a good feeling".
- Ralf Wierzbowski
Ralf Wierzbowski is a painter and draughtsman, photographer and videographer, composer, object and installation artist and multimedia artist. He paints spontaneously and expressively, presenting the subjects with vehement gestures and a lot of empathy on large boards in such a way that one is frightened, mostly black on a white background. He paints over photos on aluminum and works on hybrid, polarized video images, tries to bind fixed and flowing images together in designed environments in such a way that they are perceived as equal, and experiments with beamers, digital picture frames, and props to create scenes that trigger strong sensations.
Who is ULTIMATE.NOW?
ULTIMATE.NOW is an art project by the Aachen based artist Ralf Wierzbowski and the art sponsors of LATER IS NOW, Nikos Geropanagiotis & Manuela Koch-Geropanagiotis.
LATER IS NOW creates temporary spaces within which art lovers and artists can meet, develops formats to promote the free art scene and operates as a mediator. The aim of LATER IS NOW is to establish low-threshold approaches to art.
As always, it started out playfully.
Ralf explored the VR technique as a possible medium of artistic expression. He came up with this apparently simple and yet ingenious idea, which today is the basic principle of ULTIMATE.NOW. Three years later, after countless hours of fine conception, software engineering, tests and joint further development, the basic idea ULTIMATE.NOW is ready and wants to go out into the world.