Ch.Oker
z.One
January 21 - February 3, 2023

z.One is an interactive installation presented by Ch.Oker that serves as a de-virtualization of the wireless networks that permeate the earth and the global webs of information that entangle us. Dispersed throughout lower_cavity’s main project space, dozens of scavenged laptops and netbooks cycle randomly through a vast directory of media files culled over the past decade from a broad array of online sources, including Instagram stories, Twitch streams, Youtube videos, MMORPGs, etc. As viewers navigate the space, webcam-activated sensors trigger random shifts in this material while simultaneously recording viewers’ movements through the space. These recordings become incorporated into the main file directory, and thus into future instantiations of z.One, resulting in a dense, continually evolving audio-visual labyrinth constructed around a composite protagonist. The installation serves as an analog of the affective spaces of online culture and consumption, a passage through a fragmentary, self-reflexive region of collapsing hierarchies of information.

Ch.Oker is a joint audio project between multimedia artists Network Glass and Nick Vyssotsky begun in 2020. The first product of their collaboration was a laminated plastic bag tethered to a usb stick containing five audio tracks made using various forms of digital and analog synthesis, pure data, and audio taken from social media videos, released in 2021. Ch.Oker is primarily interested in the overlap of virtual and terrestrial environments and the dissociative state resulting from that clash of contexts.