WHAT IF // HVA OM

What happens to our sexuality when we are surrounded by digital offers and robotics? The porn industry was quick to embrace the new digital technology, taking full use of its possibilities. With VR and social networks, our interaction has shifted from intimate to digital.
In «What if / Hva om» at the Nordenfjeldske Kunstindustrimuseum, we present Bastiaan Buijs’s design project “Satyr” and Marta Giralt’s “Virtual X”. 

"Virtual X" investigates the future of extreme sexual experiences in virtual reality. Early research in VR has proven that there is a link between virtual experiences and behaviours in the physical world. This project questions whether extreme pornographic experiences, such as simulated rape, could become a mechanism to elude the moral and legal constraints of the real world. 

By designing the three objects that would enable such an experience, "Virtual X" exposes a near future to raise debate around the direction the pornography industry travelling is within the context of virtual reality and whether or not these extreme experiences could, and should, be regulated.

The dutch designer Bastiaan Buijs has designed a sex toy with a bright pink torso that can be mounted like a vaulting horse. The designer wanted to combat the image of “a sad lonely man with a blow-up doll”, by creating an object that users would be happy to openly display in their homes.

In Marta Giralt’s “Virtual X” the estetiscs from the game consols meets the visual language of the SM culture resulting in a group of objects that one can find either disturbing or pleasing and alluring.

In What if Nordenfjeldske Kunstindustrimuseum invites you to debate the future of sexual encounters. Online dating has in a mere decade gone from being seen as a last resort for long time singles to being a part of our everyday life. App’s like Tinder and Grindr creates a pool of possibilities. The two designers in the exhibition What If have designed two distinctively different projects, the analogue Satyr or the digital Virtual X, both inviting you the question What if?