/ Alternative Realities Illustrated
This analysis focuses on the hybrid exhibition Alternative Realities Illustrated (2025), which formed part of the annual research symposium Animating Digital Identities held at the University of Greenwich that same year. In curating this exhibition, I seek to explore two aspects that I outlined in the previous chapters, which are: the notion of hybridity and the collaborative dynamics between digital curators and artists. Both are essential to examine through practice-led inquiry. As established previously, physical exhibitions that attempt to display net art are often prone to failure due to environmental constraints. Net art requires interactivity and audience engagement through networked participation to realise its full potential; yet, presenting it solely in digital form can also disorient visitors. In my view, a hybrid approach proves most successful, as the physical presence of a work can lend curatorial authority and gently guide viewers into engagement with its digital dimensions. In planning this exhibition, I therefore consider how to meaningfully integrate these two spaces without compromising the integrity of the artworks or limiting their expressive impact.
Secondly, I aim to critically reflect on the relationship between artists and curators working collaboratively. As discussed in the subchapter ‘Curator/Artist/User’, within new media art, particularly in net art curation, the boundaries between these roles are frequently blurred. This fosters a horizontal organisational structure that encourages co-creation and supports more democratic models of exhibition-making. Finally, as part of a larger event, the annual symposium for which I also develop the website, it is crucial that the exhibition retain a distinct identity rather than being subsumed as a satellite project. It is essential that the students who participate receive appropriate recognition, and that the exhibition stands as a coherent, self-contained statement within the wider programme.
The symposium Animating Digital Identities centres on the topic of digital identity and avatars, engaging in a full-day discourse on a subject that has gained unprecedented cultural and social momentum over the last decade. Today, the expression and performance of a diverse range of digital selves, from video game avatars to virtual health assistants, have become deeply embedded in the fabric of everyday life for large parts of the global population. This phenomenon has been both amplified and complicated by rapid technical innovations across mediated environments, including metaverse platforms, augmented and extended reality (AR/XR), generative AI, and hyper-targeted recommendation algorithms. Yet these developments remain unevenly distributed; in many low- and middle-income countries, the cost and accessibility of data infrastructure continue to shape and at times limit the very possibility of digital selfhood. It is for this reason that the symposium approaches digital identity as a prism through which broader social and cultural dynamics are refracted, inviting a range of perspectives to examine the theory and practice of the avatar in an age of distributed digital environments.
As part of my curatorial contribution, and in order to fully represent the symposium within the digital space it seeks to examine, I develop a dedicated website intended to function with its own digital identity. In parallel, we organise a student showcase featuring work from the University of Greenwich’s animation department, displaying projects created over the past year that engage with the theme of digital avatars. From a curatorial perspective, I recognise that although the student showcase is part of the larger event and its digital platform, it requires a distinct identity that harmonises with the main symposium’s aesthetic while asserting its own conceptual coherence. Although each student project engages in some way with avatar creation, their themes, styles, and motivations vary significantly. It becomes clear through several curatorial meetings that simply grouping them under the broad theme of “avatars” would be reductive. A more nuanced curatorial framework is needed to honour the diversity of the work while providing a unifying narrative.
I work closely with four students: Anna Buka, Gabriel Rodrigues, Prashap Limbu, and T.J. Allen, each of whom approaches avatar creation from vastly different perspectives. Anna’s work, for instance, investigates the role of women in industry and show business through the lens of AI and technology, exploring how automation can function as an instrument of creative empowerment rather than merely a force of replacement. In contrast, Gabriel’s project is a narrative of resistance and freedom, following a character who fights against a corrupt, simulated world; his visual language draws on dystopian sci-fi aesthetics, inspired by The Matrix and classic anime such as Akira. Prashap’s contribution is introspective, tracing his own evolution as an artist through two avatars: Limbobobo, a chibi-style persona created in Roblox that has since transcended the game, and Sunorae Kudotsuke, a DnD character inspired by martial arts narratives. Finally, T.J. Allen’s character, Cody Kallper, embodies a search for identity through humorous, misguided confidence, adopting and adapting various aesthetics and roles with a “how hard can it be?” approach that inevitably unravels into comic and poignant failure.
Given the pronounced diversity in thematic concern and representational strategy, it is clear that a more flexible yet focused curatorial theme is necessary. After considerable discussion with the artists, we agree on “exploration” as the central concept, which in turn gives rise to the exhibition title Alternative Realities Illustrated. This framework allows us to foreground the avatar not merely as a digital likeness, but as a vessel for identity, desire, and rebellion, enabling stories too complex, defiant, or tender for conventional expression. The exhibition thus becomes a space of boundary-breaking and rule-bending, where personal journeys and systemic critiques can coexist within a shared narrative of discovery.
In its final form, the exhibition is presented as a hybrid model, integrating physical representations of student projects with a virtual gallery accessible during the symposium. This approach aligns with what curator Cici Moss terms “expanded Internet art”—a practice that extends digital artworks into physical and distributed systems, putting them in a state of continuous becoming (Moss, 2019). 2 Inspired by this fluidity, we aim to create a seamless and organic interplay between digital and physical spaces. Furthermore, the exhibition embraces a curatorial method in which the artists themselves become co-curators, each designing their own digital gallery environment. This deliberate blurring of roles continues the theme of hybridity, challenging conventional divisions between artist and curator and opening new possibilities for collaborative creativity.
The first representational challenge I face is the design of the exhibition’s digital interface. It is essential to create a platform that resonates with the overarching aesthetic of the Animating Digital Identities (ADI) symposium, ensuring visual and conceptual cohesion, while simultaneously establishing a distinct identity for the student showcase, Alternative Realities Illustrated. The ADI symposium’s branding is built upon a striking colour palette of blue and yellow, and in close collaboration with the artists, we elect to adopt this same scheme. This decision is not merely cosmetic; it functions as a visual thread, weaving the student exhibition into the larger symposium’s fabric and reinforcing a shared thematic concern with digital existence.
This idea extends to the language and structure of the website itself. I deliberately avoid the term ‘student’, opting instead for the professional designation of ‘artist’. Furthermore, the section dedicated to their profiles is titled ‘Curator/Artist’. This terminological shift is essential to my aim of establishing a genuinely collaborative and non-hierarchical approach. It is a conscious effort to reposition the contributors not as passive providers of content but as active agents fully involved in the curatorial process—co-creators shaping the narrative of the exhibition alongside me, rather than merely submitting their artworks with a short biography.
A fundamental curatorial departure from the main ADI website is the representation of the artists themselves. Where the symposium site features traditional participant photographs and biographies, we conceive a more conceptually integrated approach. We decided to replace conventional portraits with the central avatars from each artist’s own work. This is a deliberate strategy to embody the symposium’s core inquiry: that avatars are not just representations but can become sites of identity construction and narrative agency. In a very tangible sense, the artists use their artworks as their digital identities for the purpose of the exhibition, effectively living the theme they are exploring. For the individual artist pages, the task is to present their biographical information and artistic practice without departing from the digital, avatar-centric style we have established. The solution is to use the avatars themselves as framing devices for the biographies, integrating them into the layout so that the fictional persona and the real-world artist are in continuous dialogue. The artwork is displayed in a clean, simple format. This intentional simplification serves a specific curatorial function: to provide users with a clear, digestible understanding of each project before they venture into the more immersive and experimental virtual exhibition space. This layered approach is designed to scaffold the user’s engagement and enhance their appreciation of the complex works on display.
The concept of a curated landing page is equally crucial. The main ADI symposium site uses a powerful, defining image from the body>data>space collective's 2009 performance Dare We Do It Realtime? featuring their avatar, Orla Ray. The image is treated with a blue filter to align with the colour palette and an old television effect to impart a retro-futuristic, cyborg aesthetic. We adopt a similar conceptual strategy for the Alternative Realities Illustrated landing page. Here, the four key avatars from our participating artists are assembled and treated with the symposium’s blue and yellow filters. However, instead of the TV glitch effect, we opt for a pixelation filter. This choice is deeply intentional: where the TV effect on the main page suggests a broadcast or transmission, the pixelation on our landing page speaks directly to the building blocks of digital computation. It visually articulates the idea that identity within this realm is constructed from the numerical matter of the machine—fragmented, granular, and endlessly recombinable.
In the end, while these pages are meant to inform, to introduce the artists and frame the exhibition, their design is not just functional. It is deeply, thoughtfully curated. Every choice, from the blues and yellows that tie us to the wider symposium, to the way we frame biographies with avatars instead of headshots, even the pixelated texture we layer over the images, is intentional. We want the site to feel like part of Animating Digital Identities, but also to stand on its own as a distinct space with its own voice: the voice of Alternative Realities Illustrated. We are not just making something look nice—we are building a digital environment that feels cohesive, meaningful, and true to the ideas we are exploring. And through that process, I am reminded again and again of what becomes a kind of mantra for this research: that in digital curation, the interface is never a neutral container but is itself a critical, expressive medium that shapes meaning and mediates