THE ARTWORK: CORDYCEP’

cordycep’ by grotesk.group is the visualized psychotic episode of a man infected by Raws’ art. the viewer exhausts the absolute maximum of personal distance and through his shameless and direct observation not only triggers the fear of our protagonist, but also injects himself into his body without permission and in the siege of his inked brain also witnesses the epicenter of the artistic infect.

just as the parasitic fungus ‘ophiocordyceps unilateralis’ takes control of the behavior of its victimized host, in ‘cordycep’ we see a rapidly spreading infection that takes over the mind of our protagonist and gives us a glimpse into its approach to attacking body and mind. raws’ work spreads across the brain stem between the subject’s irritated thoughts, shows up for a brief moment in the mri-scan, and finally increases its load on the body to such an extent that it emerges in bright colors on the sweaty skin of our sad hero.

cordycep’ is a multidisciplinary work consisting of a mixture of motion capturing, 3d animation as well as motion and sound design, based on generative networks trained on raws’ work and style. the textures and modified mri-scans are stylistically captivating due to raws’ unmistakable style and thus served as a textural basis for the 3d-models of the human used in this artwork. all motion sequences were recorded on the members of the grotesk.group, the sound and motion design was implemented and realized in such a way that the misery can be experienced unmistakably when looking at it.