At 6:00 p.m. on February 4, 2011, during the finissage of the Technology Requested exhibition, Maya Brush, a 'Homo Virtualis', will be born. A virtual sculpture who at that moment enters the real world for the first time. Maya is the first virtual beauty to be created solely by the computer – an artificial body which is oriented to human ideals of beauty, yet comes into being entirely virtual, without being created from any real model. Maya has been developed over the past three years by the artist Kirsten Geisler.

As a virtual model she represents the dream of perfect pulchritude. Maya the digital beauty stands for all prefab-girls, the standardized, technically modeled beauties that are propagated in advertising and the media.

Starting from the opening of the Technology Requested exhibition, on November 26 2010, her DNA structure and countdown. And on February 4 the worlds first virtual birth takes place at NIMk. This is also to be followed on-line www.firstvirtualbirth.de. After the birth Maya can be reached via her facebook page: www.facebook.com/maya.brush

Just like a real model periodicals and glossy magazines will be writing about her. Her life will be exposed to viewers on television and YouTube. These “real” appearances in the media will be virtual performances. Already Maya has bookings with famous fashion photographers and fashion designers.

As a virtual art figure she is the first sculpture who performs in the real medial world. As a digital beauty, in the future she will no longer be seen exclusively in international museums and art institutions. Maya will be transformed into a literal 'art figure' who seeks real media publicity, and will use this public forum to make her way back into the art world.

Since the mid-1990s Geisler has been occupied with the representation of the three-dimensional body in a virtual space and with the construction and manipulation of beauty. In Geisler's works the virtual person is a symbol for the reflection of our dreams: young, beautiful, slender, normal, healthy, and of course, never aging. Thus Geisler contributes to the social debates over virtuality, digitization and the construction of identity. Geisler's works comment on the ideal of beauty and the delusions about beauty in contemporary society and the increasing digitization and virtualization of the world.

www.kirstengeisler.com/

This Facebook site opens after her birth on February 4: www.facebook.com/maya.brush

Thanks to: Jung van Matt/Neckar