Aram Bartholl is interested in the overlap of the virtual and the real; in exposing the fallacy that the two are separate. The world we have created online–the world we see in Second Life, in Halo, in Google Maps–is so pervasive and influential in the “real” world that any percieved separation is done out of convenience, or an unwillingness to admit we are part of a universe we cannot touch.

Really, we’re looking at the at the virtual world everyday just as much as we’re looking at architecture, at botanical gardens, at new hybrid cars. By adding familiar online landmarks to physical German surroundings Aram Bartholl is making it easier for us to accept that our lives are increasingly a compendium of the eternally digital and the corporeal.

Here he built a giant marker identical to the “A” you see pinpointing a location in Google Maps. The marker is large enough to see from a satellite, and thus large enough to see in Google Earth: Google looking at itself, or the physical manifestation of one of its functionalities.

For his first-person shooter project Aram made a pair of glasses with an assault rifle built into the lenses modeled after a screen in Counter-strike. As in a FPS the gun stays centered in your field of vision while the world spins around you.

Real-life avatars is a reinterpretation of the “Hello, my name is:” stickers for the digital generation. Life online is one founded on the tenets of sharing; be they photographs, videos, personal profiles or artwork, to trhive online is to let go of privacy and share everything you’ve got. It’s understandable what he seeks to achieve here, to explore weather or not sharing your name makes you more familiar and approachable to complete strangers. The flaw, however, stems from the fact that anyone with a woman in a blue sweatshirt following them around with a name glued to a pool cleaner, comes off just a bit unapproachable.
View these and other projects on Aram’s site. Well-designed, well-thought, and well-executed, he stands as one of LVHRD’s favorite artists.