Artist Ben Elliot joined the AlUla Artist Residency for one month last February. He is an artist whose practice addresses contemporary subjects such as the emerging technologies and lifestyles, influence marketing and the construction of socioeconomic trends. In his process, Elliot integrates forward thinking companies, people and objects to explore the concepts and values they carry. Most of his works federate a group, taking place in contexts with a blurry border between the contemporary art setting and the social life environment. Ben Elliot is currently working on an extensive project of metaverse which will be presented in Berlin gallery Esther Schipper in 2023.
The first iteration of the project will take the shape of a Virtual Reality as well as a video. His work has been exhibited at Des Corps Libres, Reiffers Initiatives, Paris. Drop 06, Zien, Online. Global Gallery, Worldwide. Organized by Porsche and König Galerie. Salon de Montrouge, Paris.
During his AlUla Artist Residency, Ben Elliot has been inspired by the scenery, the local wildlife, the people in AlUla and the developments brought on by Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030. He imagined the future of these landscapes and produced a powerful immersive Metaverse experience, challenging the past and future through the digital realm, based on his historical site visits and with the help of the local community and experts.
During the “Palimpsest of Time” exhibition, Ben Elliot showcased Smartsuit, a speculative garment designed by him, which envisions the future of clothing for the human body. Perfectly designed for AlUla’s desert, it is minimalist, utilitarian and streamlined for everyday use, Smartsuit acts as a true bioskin, responding to the needs of the body in a technology driven society. Constructed from intelligent biomaterials and acting as a new exoskeleton, Smartsuit adapts to unlimited colours and intuitively shapes itself to the individuality of its user while responding to its environment. The suit adapts to the weather, provides warmth, energy and nutrients to the host, optimises the body’s performance levels, enhances the senses, stores unlimited data and connects intuitively to all social networks. The Smartsuit is self-cleaning, self-healing and self-fragilising.
On March 8th, the event “Sands of tomorrow” included an off-white cocktail and finger food and recital of Ben Elliot’s writings by Alanood.
At the intersection of physical and digital paradigms, Metaone is divided into different environments inspired by innovative places, like AlUla. Metaone envisions being a digital answer to these new kinds of cities and societies, which are at the same time smart and in adequacy with their natural habitat (i.e. biomimetic shapes).
For Elliot, AlUla represents a very exciting ambition for a futuristic country where history, nature, technology, and sciences coexist to create progress. He is interested in the conception of new spaces that rethink humanity’s relationships to the space we live in – which is also something the metaverse should provide reasoning about through the shapes (architecture, urban planning) or values (sustainability, well-being) it carries.
Ben Elliot’s workshop was intended for the younger local generation of AlUla.
