GLITCHBODIES

Rebecca Merlic (HR)

GLITCHBODIES is a multiplatform project that consists of a visual novel Game, a VR-Game Experience, an animation movie, and a performance piece. The inclusive project portraits more than 59 international protagonists from Vienna, Munich, Zagreb, Hamburg, London, Bangkok, Berlin, and Tokyo who co-created a parallel GLITCHBODIES-verse with me. 

Created through collaborations and rituals GLITCHBODIES explores new forms of feminism, LGBTQ+, Drag transformations and intimate sensitive representations of the protagonists and aims to bring them to a wider audience. In GLITCHBODIES, Avatar becomes a collective and politically charged body. Video games have undoubtedly become the most widespread form of entertainment and its impact on representational stereotypes is huge. GLITCHBODIES responds to socio-political factors as well as to the very male-dominated world of video games by creating an interactive digital space, a fluid journey through infinite individual, gender, and realities. GLITCHBODIES provides a safe platform for non-heteronormative gender positions sharing the notion of queer as political attitude, providing new perspective for the player while celebrating its protagonists with motherly care. The game engine creates safety by ritualizing the celebration of all protagonists within the world, as a mother would. This generates and opens new perspectives for the player, for you. The world within a world is instantly familiar, full of ambitions, wishes and desires through strong and sensitive collaboration with the all-important issue of all-gender equality. As more protagonists gather in GLITCHBODIES, the resolution of gender in the world rises higher and higher. 

GLITCHBODIES is a multiplatform project that consists of a visual novel Game, a VR-Game Experience, an animation movie, and a performance piece. The inclusive project portraits more than 59 international protagonists from Vienna, Munich, Zagreb, Hamburg, London, Bangkok, Berlin, and Tokyo who co-created a parallel GLITCHBODIES-verse with me. 

Created through collaborations and rituals GLITCHBODIES explores new forms of feminism, LGBTQ+, Drag transformations and intimate sensitive representations of the protagonists and aims to bring them to a wider audience. In GLITCHBODIES, Avatar becomes a collective and politically charged body. Video games have undoubtedly become the most widespread form of entertainment and its impact on representational stereotypes is huge. GLITCHBODIES responds to socio-political factors as well as to the very male-dominated world of video games by creating an interactive digital space, a fluid journey through infinite individual, gender, and realities. GLITCHBODIES provides a safe platform for non-heteronormative gender positions sharing the notion of queer as political attitude, providing new perspective for the player while celebrating its protagonists with motherly care. The game engine creates safety by ritualizing the celebration of all protagonists within the world, as a mother would. This generates and opens new perspectives for the player, for you. The world within a world is instantly familiar, full of ambitions, wishes and desires through strong and sensitive collaboration with the all-important issue of all-gender equality. As more protagonists gather in GLITCHBODIES, the resolution of gender in the world rises higher and higher. 

glitchbodies.myportfolio.com
vimeo.com/713218282

Lead artist: Rebecca Merlic 

Unity development: Vivien Schreiber 

Sound design: Manuel Riegler 

Scenario: Rebecca Merlic, Hannah Jöchl 

Editing (shortmovie): Jana Libnik 

3D-modeling: Rebecca Merlic, Vivien Schreiber, Anna Rüth, Jakob Philippsen 

Unity development (VR): Anna Rüth 

Credit design (shortmovie): Sarah Pobelsek 

Protagonists: 

10xflames, Adrianna Knouf, Alexandru Cosarca, Aliya Davletova, Aurorasun Labeija, Anja Jennel, Annemarie Arzberger, Anthea Schranz, Antone Pong, Ari Ban, Danielle Pamp, David Pritz, Donatella Stracciatella, Ed Römer, Ekaterina Kormilitsyna, Gameerror, Hannah Jöchl, Hans Schmidt, Harald Stojan, Hayden Del Rey, Helen Starr, Judith Kranz, Klitclique, Margarete Jahrmann, Marie Luise Lehner, Monika Freinberger, Morrigan Xaster, Natasa Novak, Nuh Peace, Panlert Bent, Pat Brozena, Ploy, Rebecca Merlic, Sailor Leviathan, Salem Haze, Sarah Hauber, Sarah Merlic, Selina Huber, Sheezus Christin, Snackjack, Susie Flowers, Seema Mattu, Tin Tunsopon, Tony Renaissance, Valentino Grassi. 

Song credits: 

SONGTITLE AUTO 

PERFORMED AND WRITTEN BY KLITCLIQUE 

PRODUCED BY MIRZA KEBO 

(2019) 

SONGTITLE S.P.A.M. 

PERFORMED AND WRITTEN BY ANTHEA 

PRODUCED BY PHILIPP M. MAIER 

MASTERED BY ALEXANDR VATAGIN 

(2021) 

SONGTITLE LOST ISLANDS 

PERFORMED AND WRITTEN BY TONY RENAISSANCE 

MIXING BY MATAYA WALDENBERG 

MASTERING BY DINO SPILUTTINI 

(2021) 

With support from: The Austrian Federal Ministry for the Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sports; ORF III; Vienna Business Agency; Bayrisches Staatsministerium für Wissenschaft und Kunst; Bayern Innovativ, Germany 

Rebecca Merlic (HR/AT/DE) is a European digital artist and architect, experimental filmmaker and university assistant in the core team of Experimental Game Cultures at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Her work is strongly influenced by alternative ways of society and transgression in socioeconomic conventions as well as new forms of artistic and architectural production employing new technologies. She is the holder of the Marianne von Willemer Prize 2020 for digital media. Currently she is a transdisciplinary resident at European Alliance of Academies Ignorance is Strength AIR program, and she is working on DigitalHumanism x FutureLiving in collaboration with the Austrian Cultural Forum in Tokyo.     

Rebecca Merlic (HR/AT/DE) is a European digital artist and architect, experimental filmmaker and university assistant in the core team of Experimental Game Cultures at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Her work is strongly influenced by alternative ways of society and transgression in socioeconomic conventions as well as new forms of artistic and architectural production employing new technologies. She is the holder of the Marianne von Willemer Prize 2020 for digital media. Currently she is a transdisciplinary resident at European Alliance of Academies Ignorance is Strength AIR program, and she is working on DigitalHumanism x FutureLiving in collaboration with the Austrian Cultural Forum in Tokyo.