You Too Can Use Augmented Reality to Terraform the UK

"Famous New Media Artist" Jeremy Bailey is both real and a construction. Eternally optimistic and energetic, sporting tiny jean shorts and a white turtleneck, he's auctioned off his Facebook profile, staged an augmented reality exhibition called "Penis Paint," and created a series of augmented reality portraits. For his latest exhibition, "The Future of the United Kingdom," Bailey is giving gallery attendees the opportunity to terraform an underwater, post-apocalyptic UK with augmented reality gear—a Japanese Gundam-style suit and plasma cannons, to be specific.

The show, which launches today, is being held at the Turner Contemporary gallery in Margate. Before making the final preparations for the exhibition (which doubles as a dance party of sorts), Bailey took some time to drop character and riff on post-apocalyptic landscapes, terraforming, and painting with virtual penises.

Motherboard: Did Turner Contemporary commission "The Future of the United Kingdom"?

Jeremy Bailey: Yes. The museum is in Margate, where there is also a video game festival going on now, so they were like, "How could we connect this abstract expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler, JMW Turner, and video games?" They thought of me, and asked if I could connect the dots. That's usually how it works. I like to respond to context and perform the act of making work. So, if there is a situation where someone is like, "We have this problem," it's perfect because my character loves to solve problems. He fancies himself the world's most creative problem solver, and he uses technology to solve problems.

In this case, the problem was connecting some thematic dots, but also providing some entertainment to the people of Margate. The performance is really similar to one I did a few months ago at the AGO Gallery, which is a museum in Toronto. I proposed something called "Penis Paint." [laughs] It's a 3D, virtual reality phallus that attaches to your crotch. Anyone can wear it, and then it paints via the ejaculate. It's actually really difficult to do well. I dance to female pop music; quite well I think, because the last time I did it I got rounds of applause.

So, you pitched "Penis Paint" to Turner Contemporary, too? 

Yes, but it's a family institution, so they weren't really sure. So, I was sort of looking at what was going on in the UK, and it's essentially a flood zone. Even on my way down here a train was diverted because the track was underwater. It's just been raining all winter, and the ocean is really rough, and it's because the jet stream is meandering because the ice caps are melting due to global warming.

But, back to connecting the dots on Turner and Frankenthaler and their careers. Frankenthaler was an abstract expressionist but also a landscape painter. That's interesting for me because abstract expressionism is very much about the body, and the landscape is very different from the body. Turner was well known for really being interested in riffing off of man vs. nature, and the ocean being this force.

So, thinking about that, as well as the flooding and global warming, I came up with this paint platform that uses these Gundam-style guns that can terraform and paint a landscape very similarly to Frankenthaler, but in this flooded apocalypse with cars floating around and debris fields that were aesthetically inspired by the Japanese tsunami. But, at the end of the day, it's really just a good time. I try to be playful within that context, dancing for three hours and only to female pop.

So, what will people see when they enter the gallery?

You'll walk into the gallery and hear Rihanna or something, and you'll come into a room and I'll be dancing. There will be a wall-sized projection of an augmented reality version of me. I'll have two Gundam guns attached to my arms, and then around me a rolling, rough sea. And if I shoot the water, mountains emerge. I can shoot these missiles and paint with the other gun, so there are these sort of rainbows that go across the landscape. Then I control gravity and do all of these effects so that it's a bit of a laser light show that you would see at a club.

Now, people who attend the show can wear this virtual suit, right? 

Yes. It will empower people. I'm hoping children will be there and they'll feel like they have these powerful arms, and they'll be these little men against nature.

It almost reminds me of those augmented reality projections that you see at Disney World.

Yeah, that's a visual, and it really exploits everyone's latent narcissism, which is an ongoing theme in my work. People love to see themselves, and they love to see themselves in an artwork, so it's essentially a mirror in that respect.

A gallery in its institutional context usually excludes the public explicitly. The art world is the only place where the customer is always wrong, and they're made to feel that way. I'm trying to make it feel like it's approachable and inclusive. They'll be interacting with me, Famous New Media Artist Jeremy Bailey, which is just a bizarre personality who is very optimistic even in a post-apocalyptic context.

What's interesting about your terraforming idea, is that its meaning is subverted. When you think of terraforming, you think of pre-historical and pre-technological times—some alien species seeding the Earth. But, when you think of it in a technological civilization, it becomes apparent that we've been terraforming our surroundings for as long as we had technology. 

I have a piece called "Video Terraform Dance Party," and I allow you to bob your head around and create an island. It's based on this idea that the whole world has sort of gone crazy for creative capital, and we just gave artists control. The artists would build whole nations from scratch using just their artistic gesture. They can paint islands, add trees, and populate it with their head. Then they add a gallery, but it costs a lot of money. Eventually, they go into a tremendous amount of debt and attack other nations that other artists have created. That's kind of the history of mankind.

We have these little planets—one of them is called the United States, one of them is called the United Kingdom, one is called Iraq. We go in there and get what we need, and in order to sustain that practice, we have to do it again. You think of terraforming as going to Mars and adding trees, but essentially we've been terraforming this planet, and we're about to destroy it and have to probably terraform it again.

It's funny, when you hear all of these ideas about how to defeat global warming, the most ambitious ones are absolutely insane. Like, build a kelp forest or a plankton oasis that will cover 10,000 square miles and absorb light. It's like, no, why would you do that when it's so much easier to build a few electric car stations?