“????ℎ????????????, ????ℎ????????????” Gazing upon it, she dotes on its monstrosity and its vulnerability. From Seneca’s genesis collection.

The man who walks through the streets of an ancient city that slowly sinks into the sand represents the tenacity of mankind in the face of every adversity and its resistance to surrender. Resiliens. Resilience from the Latin resiliens means, in physics, the property of materials to resist shocks without breaking. This is where its human meaning takes its cue. Resiliens, tells the story of the relationship between man and the harshest of the environments, the desert. The ability of man to live, survive and adapt to the extremes of his possibilities. In its simplicity as in its visual impact, the shot is also a reflection of my life, made up of continuous fights and challenges despite adversity and failures, the ability to be scratched and never give up. Resilience as the basis of something greater. Not just resistance but going beyond robustness; not merely withstand a shock but actually improving because of it. The ability to absorb the inclements of life and make them one’s own to thrive through it. Founded in the 13th century as the center of numerous trans-Saharan trade routes, Chinguetti is a ksar in Mauritania, a medieval trading center, today severely threatened by the advance of the desert; part of the city has already been swallowed by it. A world heritage site, the city is locally considered to be the seventh holy city of Islam and is home to five of the oldest still operating libraries on the planet.

During one particular period of my life, I was spending money like I never had money. Truthfully, it was because I never had money. I was eating top ramen and frozen foods every day just so I could buy things to impress people. Stupid right? Well, it worked. I was constantly surrounded by many friends, yet somehow never felt more alone. I couldn’t tell if people cared about me or cared about what I could do for them. One by one, those friendships fell apart because our foundation was built on envy. I met a new group of people who changed my life. It was never about what I could do for them, but rather about what we could do together. They openly shared their knowledge, experiences, and wins with me. They had the type of kindness that empowered me to pass it on. By replacing envy with compassion, my friendships took on a deeper meaning. We had each other’s backs, supported one another, and encouraged each other to pursue our dreams.

Being perceived by others is a tiring task. To constantly present yourself a certain way – physically and emotionally – is draining. To reflect this, I drew an exhausted mermaid coming home from work to reveal that she is, in fact, a human. In order to find peace of mind, we mustn’t forego our true selves – the core of who we are.

Naturverse is the realm of possibility: VR makes us masters of dimensions, distances, the bath of light and the weight of things. Like dangerous Gods in the metaverse we can shape Nature. A digital city comes to life atop a dune of sand and concrete, where everything vibrates touched by artificial light under our astonished gaze Witnesses to the materialization of our dream landscape Engineers of surreality. So far, every step taken to learn the mysteries of nature, to imitate its wonders, to crack its secrets, has been accompanied by a visceral disregard for its condition, for the conservation of its resources and for a future of coexistence. We have intervened nature at our whim. We have erected iron fantasies to the point of populating the Earth with our artificial sceneries. We have loved nature with the same passion with which he have plundered it. Naturverse is the realm of opportunity. We can become one with nature again or continue down the path of disintegration. Learn or fail. Create or continue to tear down. Consciousness 3.0 * NatureVerse is part of the “MetaVRse” exhibition of @0x_society in Montreal. This exhibit, beginning on February 24th, aims to understand and question how trends in the digital world will impact our lives and explore environmental preservation in the digital age. * SOUND ON! Music by Jos Technical Specs: 3840×2160 px / 30 fps / Loop

The accessibility and democratization of technology have forever changed the world we inhabit, merging the physical universe with the digital one. And as usually happens in these cases, the necessary reflections never occur at the speed at which technology is advancing, dragging us, whether we want it or not, to a transhumanism for which we should
prepare ourselves as a society. In the future we will live in a world where nothing will be
more real than fiction and nothing more fictional than reality. In this new universe, where death does not exist, you will be eternally waiting for a Charon that was never programmed to take you to the bank of a river that was never designed.
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Seamless Loop (web player makes a cut that doesn’t exist in the file that the buyer receives) – 1/1 edition | 1080x1650px | Joseba Elorza (a.k.a. MiraRuido) | 2022.