Metrograph

Is there a separation between our bodies and the technologies we use?

Two artists’ works explore the enmeshment of bodies and technologies in different ways.

In David Cronenberg's eXistenZ (1999) a virtual reality game designer is hunted by extremists who believe her new game threatens reality itself. In Cronenberg's film, virtual reality is indistinguishable from the real world (precisely what makes it dangerous).

Tishan Hsu’s emergent mesh (2025) a real-time video produced in a game engine, explores a completely different vision. The world it presents is an unsettling landscape of abstracted textures animated by miniature screen-like shapes. Viewers are made to feel like they were exploring the cellular tissues of a body imagined by a computer; digital, yet eerily human.

What unites these works is this fusion between physical and digital worlds. Both artists reject the binary between body and technology, instead highlighting the organic, textural and flesh-like qualities of the technologies they portray. Cronenberg does this through special effects, prosthetics, and wearable technologies like umbilical bio ports. Hsu accomplishes similar effects through his sculptural, pulsating, flesh-like textures and forms. In both works, the body is a technology, flesh is a medium, and the line between game and art, real and virtual is not just blurred, it's enmeshed.

New Humans: From Museum to Screen is an ongoing monthly series co-curated by Thalia Stefaniuk and Inge de Leeuw.

eXistenZ (David Cronenberg, 1999, 97 mins)
emergent mesh (Tishan Hsu, 2025, 10 mins)*

35mm print courtesy of TIFF Film Reference Library

Distributor: American Genre Film Archive

*emergent mesh screening only on Friday, June 19th

Introduction by New Museum artist Tishan Hsu and emergent mesh screening only on Friday, June 19th