Interview with mixed reality developer and multimedia designer Aleksandra Hojszyk.
“… at the end of the day we’re sitting in our rooms and we need to be aware of what we can get from the world without technology”
Aleksandra Hojszyk: In today’s world everybody is aware of plastic pollution, but they’re not really aware of the digital pollution which is creating the same scarcity on earth. It’s invisible to us and yet in front of our screens. I think we need to show people that the choices made in their homes have big influences on the whole world. I think that young people are totally open to take on this responsibility, maybe not take it on, but they are open to everything and they want to try everything. However sometimes it’s pretty difficult to show them something because they’re overwhelmed.
It’s within this that I have started to work with MA students at PJAIT and their mixed reality classes. I’m very passionate about the topic and especially the Hololens and future devices like that.
crossing domains: Why are you interested in them?
A: I think that they’re our future. But I’m not a big fan of VR because it separates us from our reality and mixed reality enhances it. I think this is better because we can still have the beauty of our world but with tools that can enrich our world and make it easier.
cd: And what do you mean by easier?
A: I mean easier in the sense that the internet has made our world easier. We could have access to more information, but not in an overloading way while blending our world together and having access to different tools and help in our lives. I think augmented reality and mixed reality can be a very nice option for how to do this. For instance people with disabilities, like with seeing and hearing impediments, it will give them a helping hand.
cd: Do you think this enhancement is possible under the current ideological setup of the internet at the moment; which is heavily reliant on surveillance capitalism, the attention economy, and terms like these. Do you think these technologies will ever be able to be beneficial under this current economic and ideological structure that the internet functions in?
A: I hope so, I hope so. I know that the current situation isn’t very just and everything is very mixed and fucked up, and based on capitalist ideas. But I think we cannot throw out everything we have now, but we can make sure our future is full of new ideas. We can take everything that we have right now and make something different from it. I don’t believe that right now we can have a huge revolution and say no to everything that is contemporary and do something totally different. I think change can come on a small scale, for example how we think about things. What I was teaching in all of my classes and workshops was critical thinking and to not take everything on face value, at first glance. I was trying to encourage the students to find their small spark of individual thinking so as to even question what I was saying and what I was showing.This is because everybody is showing everything from a subjective point of view because we can’t ever say if something is completely the truth.
cd: So how do you practice the digital ecology, in terms of internet use? What I find fascinating about it is how it could change the relationship between our online and offline worlds. If everything is compressed and pixelated then it directly challenges our fluid HD hyper-rendered post-internet aesthetics of the moment (See the online exhibition WE=LINK by Chronus Art Centre). At the beginning of the quarantine there was a huge rush to bring exhibitions online but no one was mentioning digital representation and there wasn’t much sensitivity towards it. What I think the digital ecology does is provide a very interesting relationship between online images and real life experience, because if we treat all of the images by reducing their carbon footprint, in the most basic definition of the digital ecology, then we get a very pixelated representation, not a copy. Which is the antithesis of this post-internet aesthetic. But it could maybe provide a space, a stop gap, that makes us reevaluate our relationship between online and offline. I’m a little bit skeptical of mixed reality and virtual reality. But I’m very open to being convinced. I’m interested investigating the blurring of the boundaries between the two (because they’re already blurred in so many ways that we don’t know, in these hidden ways. Like how are bank accounts are linked linked to our insurers, who are linked to our fitness trackers and then linked to social media). So we already have the blending of online and offline without us explicitly knowing it. So I’m always wondering how we can make an interesting break to ask people to think about these two worlds.
So, to go back to my original question after that… how do you practice the digital ecology in the day to day? Because are do you have a designer, or are you a full-time teacher?
A: I’m an alumni of PJAIT and my diploma was about mixed reality applications for mediation and spiritual practice. It was an open question and a trigger for thought. I tried to make it a very open question and to be a part of this techno-spirituality. In my thesis I was more writing about the technical things, like designing mixed reality for the Hololens. So there isn’t any research about techno-spirituality right now because I wasn’t able to do it extensively with people. So it is still waiting for me to do that. As a person I definitely like our reality and I don’t want to be completely online. I’m not a freak for all the these technologies, and on a daily basis I try to be very aware about them. But we are facing a world full of technology, we can’t change it and go back to the past when it was analogue.
cd: I think there is this interesting debate surrounding the march of progress. My practice as a curator was looking at the ethics of technology and this made me very interested when people make the case that: “Because everything is moving forward we must engage with these things, take them up and embrace them.” Maybe sometimes not doing something with technologies is the most critical thing to do, or at least maybe deconstructing technology like the Anatomy of AI project by Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler.
Do you think you’ll always focus on mixed reality within your design practice?
A: I’m not sure yet. I know it will be intertwined with mixed reality because it’s something I’m very passionate about. It’s definitely something I’m looking to expand but I know that in the case the digital ecology it is not a very innocent idea.
cd: For me I think that the digital ecology isn’t something that we must immediately adhere to. I think at the moment it’s about education, by really getting it out there. Because lots of people you talk to really have no idea that it exists conceptually, or that a single email is something like 5g of CO2 (see link). So I think maybe now is the time, I’m contradicting myself here, to explore these mixed realities in terms of the digital ecology instead of strictly adhering to it. It’s a very restrictive set of rules if you lay it down like the ten commandments. Maybe now is the time in your practice to manipulate the material of the digital ecology through mixed media and through mixed reality. And then we pare it back, and then we introduce the very strict rules. Because we shouldn’t feel guilty by not implementing the digital ecology immediately. I mean it took environmentalism since the 1960’s to reach the popular attention it has now. And now we’re supposed to tell people that they should feel guilty about their internet use. It’s a huge task to be able to conceptualise these things.
A: I think it’s terrible right now, despite of feeling terrified of global warming, that we are also feeling guilty about everything we’re doing. A lot of people are depressed because of that and the outcome of that is totally, totally terrifying. One of the exercises in my workshops was to create an Instagram filter that is making people more aware of the subject. It was after the theory part where I explained how Instagram wasn’t very ecological in any way. But on the other hand if you want to influence people you need to use the tools that they use on a daily basis. What was very important for me, and also for the students, was to not only to discuss the negative things like the email example. But to also say that this one email is 5g but you make that email do something. You can show them something that they can follow, and to not lay guilt on them and leave them like that.
cd: How else do you see your role in the future? How do you extend this responsibility beyond the academy?
A: I’m not sure, yet. But I think during my future activities I will share the ideas of the digital ecology with different groups and communities. Right now I’m searching for possibilities for things that I could do in the future. Definitely I would like to be a part of this movement of change and educate people.
cd: Do you know of Marshmallow Laser Feast, they do really interesting virtual reality experiences. I’m not sure if they approach the digital ecology per say, but they do ecological projects using those technologies. I actually tried to experience it during STRP Festival in Eindhoven but sadly nothing worked.
A: This is always the problem with some technologies. The world right now is based on invisible powers that are running everything but at the end of the day we’re sitting in our rooms and we need to be aware of what we can get from the world without technology. It was also the thing that I was telling to the students: “after all of this technology and your knowledge about the digital ecology it is obvious that we cant escape or switch from digital to analogue in one day.” But now we can be more aware and do what you need to do.
cd: This is the question to wrap things up: what do you think are the utopian and dystopian scenarios for mixed realties in the future?
A: The worst case scenario, of course, is when mixed reality is used by the government to spy on us and it’s used by the military to kill more people.
cd: That’s already a reality, isn’t it?
A: Yeah! This is the scariest part of it how the sci-fi movies we were watching a couple of years ago are reality. I see a dystopian world right now. But on the other hand, I think a utopian world could one with people full of awareness and consciousness, and being together and using technology to make the world much more beautiful than it is right now. I’m not sure if any of that, utopian or dystopian, can be without each other. I don’t think that any good or bad world will be possible.
cd: A mixed reality….I think it’s interesting how it’s easier for us also to imagine the dystopian. Our visual and cultural references for dystopias are so much more available than for a collective future. We need to shift this by building positive images of the future that people can really believe in, instead of the doom we resign ourselves to.
A: My visual representation of a utopia is in Avatar when all the people and creatures are connected with the big tree and everything is intertwined with nature.
Aleksandra Hojszyk is a mixed reality developer and multimedia designer especially interested in spatial applications and the design of the future. Hojszyk was a curator and designer for Cross-Cultural Workshop Week Virtual Exhibition. Aleksandra is an alumni of the department of New Media Arts at PJAIT and a student of Modern Art — Expertise and Business at Collegium Civitas.
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