Digital America interviewed Vivian Charlesworth in November of 2024 on her work As Real as the Here.
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Digital America: Your virtual reality film, As Real as the Here (2023), addresses a post- 911 alternative landscape. This evokes curiosity amongst viewers as they are dropped into the middle of “fragmented narratives that ask to be reassembled.” What is your ideal interaction model for the work? How did you choose the media and storytelling methodology?
Vivian Charlesworth: My goal in creating As Real as the Here, was to immerse the viewer in a fractured experience that reflects the dissonance of reality in our current political landscape. By putting the viewer in the heart of the story, I ask them not only to witness the narrative, but also to actively piece it together. The VR film is a nonlinear experience, where viewers can choose their own path and engage with the film’s fictional political process from multiple perspectives – sometimes they are a passive observer and other times they are implicated by characters in the scenes. I used VR as a platform, because it allows for a heightened sensory experience. The environments I created look and act like ours, only with the volume turned up in subtle and hyperbolic ways.
DigA: This piece lives in virtual reality and is not viewable via the browser—meaning many of our users will only interact with the trailer and a few clips of the piece. Can you talk about the two experiences—VR and video/stills—and the varying user experiences?
VC: The VR version is definitely the optimal experience of As Real as The Here, as it puts the viewer physically into the world. It allows for a deep, all-encompassing engagement with the story, by letting the audience make choices and interact with the narrative. In the film, the viewer can select posters that lead to six different cut scenes: a press briefing, The Lottery of Beliefs, an aircraft carrier, an interview, a news broadcast, and a fireside chat. Ultimately the user will formulate their own version of the story depending on the order and amount of time they spend in the experience.
On the other hand, I see the single channel excerpt, trailer, and stills as a more accessible introduction to the aesthetic and themes of the film. While these formats can’t replicate the full immersion of the VR, they still showcase the visual and conceptual foundations of the work. I am aware that VR is a medium that is still uncommon, and therefore it is important to me that my film can be viewed in an alternative format.
DigA: As Real as the Here has strong political undertones. You utilize deep fakes and collaged political speeches to portray a day-in-the-life of [the] political process exercised in this alternate reality. Now with the election behind us and Trump winning a second term, how do you see the work fitting into the new political landscape?
VC: I started writing As Real as the Here a few months before the end of Trump’s first term, with the goal of understanding how disinformation and alternative facts have become normalized in American politics. While the term “post-truth” gained traction during the Trump administration, politicians have always distorted reality and used rhetoric to their advantage. Now, as we enter Trump’s second term, I believe the themes of As Real as the Here are more relevant than ever. In the film, I use techniques like deep fakes, real political speeches from both sides of the aisle, and the idea of a “Fortunocracy” — a system where beliefs become law — to critique the absurdity of political rhetoric and the casual disregard for truth by politicians. Given the ongoing political polarization and the persistence of misinformation in U.S. politics, I see the film as a reflection of today’s reality, where corporate-government relationships, belief-driven politics, and media manipulation are increasingly familiar.
DigA: In the artist statement that accompanied your piece, you have previously mentioned that you grew up on movie sets and that your work now is research-based. How have these experiences influenced and shaped your work?
VC: My father is a filmmaker and photographer, and I grew up playing on sets that he constructed for various projects. One of my favorites depicted the underside of a bridge. Embedded in the architecture of the bridge is a cage holding a lump of fur, kind of like a bear. I used to hang out in the cage and pretend that the fur lump was my pet. Ultimately I got to be a part of the final artwork – I posed in the photograph poking the “bear” with a stick. This early immersion in surreal environments gave me an intimate understanding of how images and spaces are constructed—how what we see is often a carefully orchestrated fabrication.
My art practice is based in an extensive research process, which includes much reading, writing and image accumulation. I distill this information into an image deck and script, and then into a final artwork. Although my films are fictional, I make sure they are conceptually rooted in research, allowing them to function as a broader critique.
DigA: You separate your art into “Physical Worlds” and “Digital Worlds.” What is the difference in your process for creating these worlds and how do you decide what belongs where? How do you negotiate the overlap?
VC: The distinction between “Physical Worlds” and “Digital Worlds” in my work is largely pragmatic and about the tools I use to build them. My physical works—whether installations, sculptures, or large-scale environments— exist in a real space, which can engage the senses in a very immediate way. Creating digital artworks, in VR or otherwise, allows me to imagine environments that could never exist in the physical world. What excites me is when the two worlds overlap—when a physical installation informs a digital experience, or when a digital narrative has elements that could be interpreted in the real world.
DigA: Your virtual reality film, Salt of the Earth (2019) also addresses social issues using an artificial reality. The film, commenting on companies using influencers to advertise “health” products, uses many of the same aesthetics as As Real as the Here. How is your process evolving both stylistically and thematically?
VC: Salt of the Earth and As Real as the Here share many aesthetic elements, particularly in how I use digital environments to comment on social issues. In both pieces, and in other past work, I use seductive lighting and a distinct color palette to attract people on an aesthetic level. In all my work, I play with the scale of spaces and objects to create worlds that are parallel, heightened versions of our reality. Each of my works explores a different issue – usually to do with how reality is portrayed or simulated in culture.
Salt of the Earth was my first foray into 3D worlds, and as such it laid the technical groundwork for As Real as the Here. However, in As Real as the Here, I wanted to push the boundaries of immersion, using VR to place the viewer directly in a world. My technical skills also improved during the creation of As Real as the Here, and as I move into new works, I continue to experiment with new technologies and techniques.
DigA: What are you working on now?
VC: I am currently collaborating with Edek Sher on a single channel film in game engine. Based on conflicting ideas of “Dead Internet Theory,” this film will follow three digital avatars as they traverse an artificial landscape full of broken images, linkrot, and abandoned webpages. We are using Unreal Engine, various 3D applications, and music made with deep learning, to create an immersive mythological journey through the internet as landscape.
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Check out Vivian Charlesworth’s work As Real As the Here.
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Vivian Charlesworth is Los Angeles-based new media artist and filmmaker who creates immersive digital and physical worlds. She holds a M.S. in Fiction & Entertainment from Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), an M.F.A. in Digital + Media from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), and a B.A. with concentrations in Fine Art and Comparative Literature from Sarah Lawrence College. She currently works as a visiting lecturer at Scripps College. Vivian has shown at the Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts (ISEA), as well as galleries and museums in Finland, China, New York City, Providence, San Francisco, Chicago, Minneapolis, and elsewhere.
