360: Peter Burr

Peter Burr is a New York-based artist working in VR, video, games, installation, and performance. His work has been presented across the world by institutions including Documenta 14, Athens; Le Centre Pompidou, Paris; and MoMA PS1, New York. Previously, he worked under the alias Hooliganship, and in 2006 founded the video label Cartune Xprez, through which he produced hundreds of live multimedia exhibitions and touring programs showcasing a multi-generational group of artists working with experimental animation. His works hover between abstraction and figuration to create dizzying animations that combine the language of games, viruses and algorithmic systems, mutating patterns and rhythms to create vast post-apocalyptic environments that recall layered histories of art and architecture.

Commissioned by Rhizome and co-presented by the New Museum as part of their First Look: VR exhibition, Arcology, 2016 builds on Burr’s collaboration with games producer and writer, Porpentine. It takes its title from a 1969 book by Paolo Soleri Arcology - The City in the Image of Man, which proposes a series of revolutionary utopian visions of arcologies - new communities that are based on organic and biological systems. Burr’s interpretation transports the viewer into a dense labyrinth in which inner and outer space become indistinguishable.