LocalEchoes (VR-Terroir) by Bernat Cuní
In the framework of S+T+ARTS EC(H)O – Challenge 5: Virtual Representations of Users
The project
Bernat Cuní’s residency focuses on challenging the rampant standardization of digital culture by creating hyperlocal avatars that absorb and are shaped by their environments, carrying their “lived experiences” like terroir. The objective is to visualize how context—including data, textures, and local inputs—can alter a digital identity. The work involves creating synthetic 3D materials from image inputs and extracting material qualities from HLRS’s scientific simulation visualizations. The artist is prototyping a behavioral pipeline where a 3D mesh is affected by different material properties based on proximity, moving towards designing a minimum-viable-avatar mesh with a defined movement system.
Hosted by: HLRS + Media Solution Center
The artist
Bernat Cuní is an artist who explores the digitization of objects and spaces by blending code, crafts, and robotics, focusing on emerging technologies through a post-capitalist lens. Although he began as an industrial designer in 1999, he later shifted toward research-based design focused on people, citing disillusionment with the consumerist nature of producing physical goods. His project, LocalEchoes, aims to create hyperlocal avatars for VR/AR environments that offer culturally rich alternatives to the standardized, uncanny avatars typically provided by tech giants. The artistic mission is to disrupt consumerist avatar designs by creating generative avatars that reflect users’ local culture and environment, drawing inspiration from Europe’s heritage of masks and costumes used in various festivities. The project will develop an engine that extracts characteristics from datasets and user contexts, enabling avatars to interact with their surroundings and fostering deeper non-verbal communication within collaborative virtual environments like the COVISE software.
