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Origin of Somu

October 1, 2022

Location pinLos Angeles
Sitting at the window of a digital building with a brown facade and green shutters, the artist's avatar appears dressed in bright green and red.
A digital avatar wearing a cream mask and traditional Asian dress stands in the center of the space, next to a tree with long roots and branches. Next to the avatar there is a floating mask looking to the left.

Origin of Somu is a chapter of an ongoing transmedia series that was created by CultureHub Resident Artist Andrea Kim. The Somu avatar's origin story is an allegory for entering the metaverse, raising questions about "masking" identities and performing new ones in this creator-forward take on agency in post-human times.

A digital avatar with tentacled legs and arms stands in the center of a dark landscape, the sky shows a red image of Imperial China.
Digital avatars of the audience gather in front of the doors of a building in traditional Chinese architecture, against a realistic backdrop of a sunset over mountains.

In a custom-built virtual space powered by Arium, Andrea read Origin of Somu in webXR and discussed how digital tools interface with creativity, techno-culture, and the human-machine relationship. This reading was also an auto-theoretical exploration of virtual identity, blending performance and speculative fiction in the way gender, culture, and technology are imagined and discussed.

The artist Andrea Kim sits in front of a blue screen in a green and red dress, simultaneously projected on a large monitor in front of her.
A white mask with drawn on eyes floats in the center of a digital space, in front of a tree and river.

Read the Origin of Somu Transcript and References.

Andrea Kim’s personal reflection on the project can be found here.

Credits

Creative Team

Lead Artist

Andrea Kim

3D Design and Development

Andrii Osadchi

3D Design and Development

Massimiliano Richieri

CultureHub Team

Technical Director

DeAndra Anthony

Creative Technologist and 3D Design and Development

Camille Weins

Related

Artist Icon

artist

Andrea Kim
A black and white photo of an Asian woman wearing a plain black long t-shirt and necklace.