Continuation of the “Something Has Dissipated” project. Using Metahuman Creator in Unreal Engine 5.8 and the audio-driven lip-sync feature of Metahuman Animator.
Metahuman says Poem
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Category Archives: Virtual world
Opening Petervan Solo Exhibition > June-August 2026
I am delighted to announce the opening of my second virtual exhibition, featuring a selection of physical and digital works created between 2023 and 2026. The exhibition will be on view from 1 June to 31 August 2026.
Click on the image below to enter the exhibition on the Kunstmatrix platform. The 3D gallery can be explored on PC, Mac, tablet, or mobile device. Upon entering, you will find a brief introduction with navigation instructions to help you get started.
The exhibition includes several interactive features, such as the ability to generate an online or PDF catalogue and an augmented reality tool that allows visitors to preview artworks on a wall in their own space.
Digital and acrylic paintings are available as high-quality prints in a variety of formats, with paper finishes, mounting options, and custom framing. Original canvas works can be shipped internationally. Video installations are also available and can be adapted to suit specific exhibition or presentation environments.
If a particular artwork interests you, you can contact me directly via the email icon in the artwork’s detailed view.
And one final suggestion: turn the sound on for the full experience.
My sincere thanks to the Kunstmatrix team for their outstanding support in making this exhibition possible.
Enjoy!
Petervan
The Forbidden Question at UnitedXR Europe – Homo Experiens Explorers
On 9 Dec 2025, Andreea and I gave a “talk” about our journey and lessons learned in creating The Forbidden Question. Rather than a talk, it was a performance about the performance. The talk also includes a speaking lamb from Van Eyck’s famous 1432 Ghent Altarpiece. See the lamb in the video of our talk below. At the end, you will also see a strange character running away with the stolen 12th panel of the Altarpiece.
With this piece, we are proposing a choreographed yet spontaneous play between multiple dreams and dreamers. All the actors on stage come from the audience except one: Paul. An Eastern European architect who moved to Brussels in hopes of one day building the city of the future, he has fallen asleep with his shoes on after a long day of waiting tables. This is the moment our universe is born. As participants are encouraged to chase connection and fulfillment, our cosmology cycles their souls and dreams through several layers of reality. The more assiduous the search, the more wondrous and intense the connections they make, the more oblivious and unrelenting the fleeting and cyclical nature of the game becomes. The “forbidden question” in the title is the question no one will ever find an answer to: Whose dream is this? Are my desires really mine? Am I even able to stop wanting?
The room is set up with nine physical beds (8 for the audience encircling the one bed for Paul). The performance is designed for a full 360° experience (visuals, audio, tracking), and we work with award-winning 3D artist Ozark Henry, award-winning cinematographer and DoP Arthur Moelants, and award-winning maker Thomas Mc Leish.
I would like to give some background on this project, a sort of making-of. The project started as the New New Babylon performance, at that time designed for a speaker on stage wearing a VR headset, and the audience seeing the VR rendering on a big screen behind the speaker. Here is a very, very early version of the tower of the New New Babylon:
Then, we pivoted to a version called “Dream my Dream”
This time, the audience would witness a sleeping performer with a VR headset, and follow the dream through some sort of transparent screen:
After submitting our project to both the Venice Biennale College Cinema and the Cannes Immersive 2025 competition, without being selected, we took the opportunity to critically reevaluate the core premises of the performance.
Then, as part of my end-project for the Howest course XR in Industry, we created a very early version of The Forbidden Question, which began with the story of an Eastern European waiter and the concept of central and surrounding beds. The video below is an early MVP of what we had in mind.
During this period of reassessment, Andreea came across an open call for immersive projects at the Salzburg Mozarteum X-Reality Lab. Salzburg is currently developing a state-of-the-art 360° immersive venue featuring stereoscopic projection, a 60+ channel spatial audio system, and integrated LiDAR and high-definition camera infrastructure. The lab was seeking artistic performances for the venue’s inaugural program, scheduled for March 2026.
For this project, we completely re-wrote the performance into an XR “game of life” unfolding across multiple realities, with both an actor and the audience as performers. From its earliest concept through multiple iterations, the project transformed from a one-person headset performance into an immersive XR experience designed for stereoscopic projection, 3D tracking, and 360° spatial sound. Here is an extract from our submission document. The biggest change was to move the whole New New Babylon narrative from the foreground to the background, and to let the audience experience crossing realities (from dream reality to awake-reality). We made it to the shortlist (out of 150 international candidates), but did not get selected in the end.
In preparation for our talk at UnitedXR, Andreea and I had many online sessions on the mood and conceptual flow of our presentation (Mural extract below). We wanted to present a coherent journey from New New Babylon to The Forbidden Question to The Third Council.
An aha moment emerged during these sessions: neither Homo sapiens, ludens, nor faber is capable of evaluating the validity of these new structures of reality. Their meaning cannot be assessed intellectually—they must be experienced.
Hence Homo Experiens. With an “s” to differentiate from the words “Narrative” and “Experience” that have become catch-all words.
So we like to call ourselves “Experiens Explorers” and “Designed Conspiracy” would better describe what we have in mind. See also https://petervanstudios.com/2025/12/21/the-orphic-experience-we-are-all-argonauts-again/
Kent Bye, who runs the Voices of VR Podcast, was in the room, and he invited us for an interview right after (quite an honor, if you ask me). As soon as the interview is published, the link will be added to this post.
Use the barcode above to follow the discoveries of Douglas Spar (aka The Holy Lamb). Doug is the one investigating The Third Council. And “The Forbidden Question” is now positioned as a training protocol for crossing realities and the main priority of our team right now.
We are now complementing the team with technology partners to build a pop-up 360 infrastructure for artistic performances. We are contacting immersive spaces to be on their program. We also consider a subsidy for a technology prototype for this immersive performance.
May the lamb be with you in 2026!
With deep gratitude to Andreea, TJ, Arthur, Joost, and Ozark for staying motivated during this whole process. And thanks to UnitedXR for having us.
Petervan’s Delicacies – October 2025
“Delicacies” is my incoherent, irregular, unpredictable collection of interesting sparks I came across online. Handpicked by a human, no robots, no AI. A form of tripping, wandering, dérivé, with some loosely undefined theme holding them together. Delicacies have no fixed frequency: I hit the publish button when there is enough material. That can be after a week or after 3 months. No pressure, literally. Enjoy!
Some highlights from this edition:
- ARTEFACT — a collaboration between Neal Stephenson, Joe Lubin (Ethereum co-founder), and Rebecca Barcin (LAMANA1).
- About the IDFA DocLab Program & Competition: the 2025 selections for the competition.
- New New Babylon research with Envisioning Tech’s Signals > Michell Zappa is onto something big when working on “Research-as-a-Product”.
If you prefer the full firehose, check out the Substack link: https://petervan.substack.com/p/petervan-delicacies-180
Brand new performance “The New New Babylon”
I am super-excited to announce the general availability of my brand new performance “The New New Babylon”. Here is the trailer:
The New New Babylon performance is an immersive experience, divided into six chapters—Awakening, Stepping, Flying, Gliding, Folding, and Vertigo. Each chapter explores different facets of the New New Babylon concept, blending art and interaction. Audience members are invited to actively participate, engaging with interactive elements that promote a sense of community and shared creativity. To create a multisensory journey, the performance integrates rich soundscapes, video projections, visual art, poetry, masks, VR, and stage props. It’s a brand new format to deliver content, quite different from more traditional keynotes and talks.
This artistic performance has a poetic, gentle, and profoundly human touch, evoking a dreamy, Magritte-like surrealism. The atmosphere is calm and harmonious, steering away from Sci-Fi or dystopian themes toward a vision that is non-aggressive, understated, and subtly utopian.
Designed for corporate and institutional clients, art galleries, and museums, the performance’s content, materials, and timing can be adapted to suit specific needs. The performance can also be organized as an online or in-situ workshop format.
VR-Frame from ACT3 – Flying
The performance is now available for both online and on-stage presentations, with options for bespoke adaptations or commissions. If you’re interested, feel free to reach out!
The next step is to create a fully immersive VR headset performance with live interactions with AI voices. Already available are six Unity VR packages, each designed for distinct VR spaces in the performance, including specific controller actions that control both on-stage and in-VR lighting, and different camera angles. These packages are tailored to support the various acts of the performance. These Unity packages are developed by NUMENA, a renowned interdisciplinary creative studio from Germany, specializing in award-winning spatial design and programming.
We are also developing an API-supported LLM infrastructure to enable live interactions with AI Agents. Our goal is to facilitate real-time exploration of historical New Babylon research resources during on-stage and online sessions. This infrastructure is currently being developed by Thomas McLeish, Adjunct Lecturer – Berkeley Master of Design, and master creator of the 2018 replica of the Colloquy of Mobiles.
VR-Frame from ACT4 – Gliding
And here is an extract from ACT4 of Petervan’s New New Babylon Performance.
VR-Scene from ACT4 – Gliding
And as the cherry on top: alongside a talented young cinematographer from Flanders, I’ll be applying for one of just twelve coveted spots in the 9th edition of the Venice Biennale College Cinema – Immersive program (BCC-I).
The performance is one of the deliverables of my more ambitious transdisciplinary Artistic Research Project, where I am imagining and scaffolding a City of Play through different formats. These formats can be analog and digital artwork and productions, digital overlays, sketches, performance lectures, writings, poems, blogs, installations, soundscapes, recordings, documentaries, spaces, time capsules, curations, events, group experiences, immersions, expeditions, and exhibitions.
Senza Parole – 20 Sep 2023
Petervan Studios © 2023 – 3D Video and Soundscape
Petervan Studios – Update March 2023
Petervan Artworks © 2023 – New New Babylon – Generated with MidJourney
Here is the latest update on Petervan Studios. The previous update already goes back to September 2022
As most of you know, Petervan Studios is the melting pot of three studios: The Art Studio, The Interventions Studio, and The Scaffold Studio
The Art Studio
My latest artworks are on the artworks section of the Petervan Studios site. Here is my cousin Joost standing in front of one of
my recent paintings: 4 panels together measuring 240cm x 200cm.
I am also working on a VR implementation of the New New Babylon (NNB) Project: a network of urban youth city districts that are connected through standard interfaces.
We are working with Spectracities to launch a design challenge by April 2023. I am doing an intro talk on this project during the Spectracities meet-up on 9 March 2023.
And here is the recording: starts at minute 7:32
NNB will also have a number of virtual Art White Rooms that will host my latest artworks.
NNB will also host a New New Babylon TOWER, and I plan to make a physical model of that tower as an example of materializing my metaphors.
A new “Performance Lecture” will consolidate all of the above in a compelling multimedia narrative and performance.
Target date for the performance and the supporting NBB material is 1 Nov 2023
The Interventions Studio
Two interesting experiences with the Zen Bricks Project
One client asked me to run a 30 min online session, where all the participants are drawing little bricks in complete silence. I was very surprised to learn how this zen moment unleashed quite emotional reactions among the participants.
Another client invited me to do something similar in real life, as part of their corporate event that was organized around the theme of mental wellness and the importance of calm moments.
The Scaffold Studio
The Scaffold is a transdisciplinary learning studio for the never-normal.
We are working on two interesting leads.
Lead #1 is a services company that owns a beautiful physical building/campus with meeting rooms, study rooms, a library, auditoria, lush gardens, etc. They run it as a private infrastructure for the public good. We look at it as an imagination infrastructure. The hardware. What The Scaffold offers is the software: the expertise, network, and practice to curate and design a series of learning studios and expeditions. The study topics are non-hierarchical organizations and new democracies.
Lead #2 is a globally operating organization trying to get its head around the topic of corporate governance. Like the first lead, they own world-class real estate, including an auditorium and a museum. We are also looking to design a physical journey between cities leading toward a major event in 2024.
We have a great coalition of advisors. Last month, Lene Rachel Andersen joined our advisor’s group as the twelfth apostle. She specialises in Bildung, Metamodernity, and Libertism. Give Lene a warm welcome.
So, that’s it for this edition. If there is something worth reporting, the next update is for Sep 2023.
Warmest,
Petervan’s Delicacies – 20 Nov 2022
As usual, an incoherent, irregular, unpredictable collection of interesting sparks. Handpicked, no robots. Minimalism in curation. Enjoy!
- About the role that art has always played in bringing complex, systemic ideas into an aesthetic experience, referring to the opening scene of Jean-Luc Godard’s absurd and irresistible science-fiction film “Alphaville”
- About a critical take on the futuristic designs for cities from Saudi Arabia to the American desert: they are seductive visions grounded in systems of control.
- About the mind-blowing new Adam Curtis documentary series about the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of Putin.
- About a new way of witnessing and documenting history with 3D models of bombed infrastructures.
- About memory, and more specifically memory by space. Imagine how we could improve memory in interactive virtual spaces. By Kei Kreutler.
If you can’t get enough of these and want more, you can hang on to the firehose, the extended version of Petervan’s Delicacies in REVUE with loads of videos. Subscribe here: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/petervan
Petervan Studios – Update Feb 2022 – The Scaffold
Here is the latest update on Petervan Studios. The previous update already goes back to June 2021.
The family is good. Somehow, we managed not to get infected by the virus. We all got boostered and respected safety measures to the max. Most of my time, I spent home in my studio and only came out for some grocery shopping, some visits to art exhibitions, and delivering the taxi service to my daughter’s school and horse stables. Zero travel since October 2019, but I cannot say I miss it.
At this moment, it looks like we are getting out of the woods of the 5th Covid wave, and measures in Belgium are getting relaxed. Partying is allowed again as of 18 Feb 2022.
More importantly: my father is still alive and kicking, and he celebrated his 90th birthday in Sep 2022!
What else?
The Bricks Project
For those who remember, this is my “zen” project. Drawing bricks in silence. Many bricks. 8,255 Bricks at the time of writing this post:
Exhibitions
Since the last update, I visited the following art exhibitions:
Luc Deleu, De Singel, Antwerp, Aug 2021
Drawing Art, BOZAR, Brussels, Sep 2021
ING Laughing Art, ING Gallery, Brussels, Sep 2021
David Hockney, BOZAR, Brussels, Oct 2021
Masculinities, FOMU, Antwerp, Nov 2021
Re-Collect, FOMU, Antwerp, Nov 2021
Rinus Van de Velde, Tim Van Laer Gallery, Antwerp, Nov 2021
Train Modernity, KMSK, Brussels, Nov 2021
Fabrice Samyn, KMSK, Brussels, Nov 2021
Pop-Art, SMAK, Ghent, Feb 2022
Chaos, Alex Vervoordt, Wijnegem, Feb 2022
Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven, Zeno X, Antwerp, Feb 2022
David Claerbout – The Close, Brugge, Feb 2022
Luc Deleu inspired by Buckminster Fuller
Detail of painting by Rinus Van de Velde – 2021
Hippie Elias (Self portret) by Etienne Elias – 1970
Fabrice Samyn – Detail from Eve&Adam – 2018
Still from The Close – David Claerbout – 2022
Outdoors
Weather did not treat us well. My recollection is one of all shades of grey and lots of rain from August 2021 till Feb 2022. Only the beginning of Sep 2021 was decent. But I have some nice winter fog pictures from my strolls and bicycle rides:
Horses
Astrid made a lot of progress in horse-riding. She won the 2nd price at a local dressage competition, and she also enjoys jumping a lot.
Talking about Astrid, in Dec 2021 she celebrated her 16th birthday. Where has the time gone?
Traveling Without Moving project
Travelling without Moving (TWM) is a series of essays documenting my mental and philosophical journey in 2020-2022.
The main outline was published in November 2020, and in the meantime, several episodes have been released. Since the last Petervan Studios update, I published one more essay on “Studios”.
There are a couple more in the pipeline, but I have a hunch that these will morph into The Scaffold project (see later in this post).
Books
Check out my GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/3085594-peter-auwera
Some highlights
Until Proven Safe: The History and Future of Quarantine by Geoff Manaugh, Nicola Twilley
Where Is My Flying Car? by J. Storrs Hall
Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice: A Treatise, Critique, and Call to Action by J.F. Martel
Lichamen by Peter Verhelst
Petervan Rides
Since July 2019, I publish every month a Spotify List with new releases combined with some oldies from the 60ies, 70ies, and beyond. Search for “Petervan Ride” and select “playlists”. Subjective selection of course, as driven only by my personal taste (or lack thereof).
Here is the latest Ride from Feb 2022, still being populated as we publish this post.
I suggest you play it in shuffle mode, it enhances the surprise experience.
My Art Practice
I did not produce much artwork. I was very focused on a work-project that required all my attention and focus. I shared most of my recent art work via my Facebook page, or on this blog under the heading “Sine Parole”. Some “highlights” if I can say that about my own work:
Petervan Artworks © 2022 – Digital scribble on iPad
Petervan Artworks © 2022 – Digital scribble on iPad
Professionalisation of Petervan Studios Art Practice
As from March 2022, I will focus on the professionalization of my art practice. I have hired a coach to help me with that. We are working with a digital archiving platform with an API that is steering the show & tell of my analogue and digital artworks. There will also be an integration with a shopping environment, and an online VR exhibition environment. There is also a brand-new website for Petervan Studios in the making. This new online environment will also become the home for a new project, working title “The Scaffold”, see below
Freelance Projects
I have been deeply involved and committed as architect and head of design of an 100% on-line learning expedition running from Sep 2021 till Feb 2022. We just landed the closing session. We still want to produce a “scrapbook” that documents the journey by end Feb 2022. The experience came in two chapters. The first chapter was a technology refresh on digital identity, infrastructure, VR, Robotics, Web3, and UX. The second chapter was about developing a practice of innovation for wicked problems, and how to design for emergence in complex adaptive systems.
I had the chance to collaborate with professional facilitation and innovation partners, and a collective of “guides” – some really smart people – that helped us shape and deliver the content.
The Scaffold
The learning expedition mentioned above had a great impact on me and the way I look at “events”. I believe I am onto something that may be the start of a new “genre” of learning studios. And I have started talking and pitching to potential partners and investors. Here is the high-level pitch:
The Scaffold is a 100% online learning studio for creating new knowledge based on the passion of the explorer.
The Scaffold can be seen as a form of Pop-Up school and/or an experimentation-based learning playground.
The Scaffold is planned as a three-year research cycle, with cohorts joining an online virtual playground for six-month intensive high-impact expeditions where together with the faculty they will create new knowledge in collaboration.
The curriculum of the expeditions is composed of several interventions, interruptions, and provocations anchored in the reality of a client’s project. The project serves as a vehicle to trigger new and imaginative thinking.
The Scaffold is a “scaffold” for something much bigger, something that could lead to a movement and foundation for better futures.
More about that later, probably in the second half of 2022. I hope to have a first client cohort signed-up by then.
So, in summary, what’s next?
The plan for the coming months is to work/play on:
Professionalizing my art practice
Pitch and realize my project “The Scaffold”
So, that’s it for this edition. If there is something worth reporting, next update is for Sep 2022.
Warmest,
Inspiration – David Claerbout
Last week, I went to the Foto Museum (FOMU) in Antwerp to see the expo Masculanities – Liberation through Photography. This expo was already at The Barbican in London in the summer of 2020. I had some time left, and a slipped into the adjacent expo Re-Collect, an overview of a decade of acquisitions of FOMU.
Very similar to my first encounter with the work of Belgian fashion designer Dries Van Noten – see my post “Confused by Beauty” from 2015 – I was touched and moved by the video installation “KING” (2015-2016) by Belgian artist David Claerbout.
“David Claerbout (b. 1969) is a Belgian artist, whose work combines elements of still photography and moving images. Using photography, video, and digital-editing tools, Claerbout creates large-scale video installations that provoke questions of time, memory, and truth. Solo exhibitions include Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens, Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, and SFMoMA in San Francisco.”
From the FOMU site:
The viewer sees a digital 3D environment based on a private photograph of Elvis Presley. The photograph was taken in 1956, when Presley was on the cusp of world fame. This was a time when the photographer, Alfred Wertheimer, could still get close to the man—before the transition from ordinary human to icon, from normal life to an era of superstardom and spectacle. David Claerbout modelled Elvis’ body using hundreds of photographic fragments of his skin and facial features. He challenges the two-dimensional nature of the photograph by adding virtual time and space. Photography is both the launching pad and the subject of KING. Claerbout confronts the viewer with the transition from looking through a lens to looking by means of a scanner. This radical reversal of normal observation means that you seem to creep into the image. Claerbout uses the artistic, conceptual and technical perspectives to question our way of looking.
FOMU has a short 5 min artist video on their site, with Dutch and English subtitles.
That was enough to get me really interested, and I found another great 30 min interview video with David Claerbout at Louisiana Channel. He explains how the whole project was made: they even used a stand-in model and stitched together thousands of pictures of Elvis’ skin on the 3D scan of the model. Amazing!
Showing us around in his “studio” – actually many different rooms in an old Flemisch house in Antwerp – Claerbout is very articulate about his work and practice and I found this super inspiring, as I am preparing next year 2022 as my year to professionalize my own art practice.
He opens with:
“I am an artist, and I do not know exactly what it is what I am doing, it seems I am changing my ways all of the time, but I am a self-taught very hungry autodidact in the domain of the moving image animation film video and what we could call virtual image making.”
As we walk through his studio, we see his drawing-room, how he started building an archive of images, how his team is usually working on one project at the time, having all equipment inhouse, two recording studios, including a small server farm in the basement to render image/video in the most optimal way.
Throughout the whole interview, there transpires a mood of silence, integrity, dedication, focus, discipline, professionalism. His origins are in painting, and drawing, and lithography.
The interview/walkthrough is full of inspiring insights, provocations,
WHAT IS IT THAT I CAN CONTRIBUTE?
MY WORK DOES NOT HAVE ANYTHING SHOCKING
I WANT TO DEVELOP A LANGUAGE
SPEAKING/WORKING WITH PEOPLE THAT YOU ARE CONFIDENT WITH, THAT YOU CAN TRUST
WHAT IS IT THAT BINDS EVERYTHING TOGETHER?
CHRONOS – KAIROS – HETEROCHRONY – THE PLURALITY OF DURATION
PRIVILEGED MOMENTS
BEING NOT AT THE CENTER OF THE COMPOSITION
THE CAMERA AS A VAMPIRE
THE RELATION BETWEEN OUR THINKING AND OUR PERCEPTION
YOU DON’T WAIT FOR BUDGETS, YOU DON’T WAIT FOR PEOPLE, YOU JUST DO IT
THE DELICATE CENTER
HOW DO WE LIVE WITH VIRTUAL MATTER?
WE HUMAN BEINGS ARE PROGRAMMED TO TRUST
WE ARE NOT PROGRAMMED TO PUT OUR SENSES INTO QUESTION
WE FIRST WILL BE SPONTANEOUS BELIEVERS AND THEN WE WILL BE ANALYTICAL
I WRITE A LOT, I DON’T PUBLISH A LOT BECAUSE IT IS SO TIME-CONSUMING
LIFE IS NOT LONGER A TAPE THAT RUNS FROM BEGINNING TO END
THE TRINITY OF PAST-PRESENT-FUTURE IN THE VIRTUAL REALM
EVERYTHING IS BUILT OUT OF TWO
A BUILT-IN REDUNDANCY
LAZINESS AND ENERGY
SHARING DIRECTLY BY SITTING TOGETHER
WE PERFORM AND AT THE END OF THE EXHIBITION THE PERFORMANCE IS OVER
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS THIS INCREDIBLY EXPENSIVE VALUABLE SINGULAR ARTWORK SITUATED SOMEWHERE IN TIME NOT IN PARTICULAR MATTER
SOMEWHERE IN THE SMALL FOLDS OF TIME, THERE ARE ENCOUNTERS
WHAT IS THE LIMIT? WHERE IS IT?
THE PRIVILEGE OF THE ARTIST OF HAVING TIME TO WASTE
THE ARTIST DOES NOT HAVE TO BE EFFICIENT
IT IS QUITE LOUD WHEN THERE IS NO SOUND
It is clear that Claerbout is full of poetry. As Norman Foster used to say “I can write you a letter, but a poem?”
No wonder the “KING” and some others I discovered in the meantime are so well resonating with where I am now and where I would like to be the next years. I may post some other inspiring stories in the weeks and months ahead as part of my transition to and professionalization of my art practice.
Warmest,
Petervan Studios 