Qorporal Quests

The Broad & Narrow Way

The Broad & Narrow Way

Installations, Qorporal Quests, Recent Works & Highlights, Works

Drawing performance and augmented reality installation.

The Broad & Narrow Way is an ongoing work in progress, conceived to be developed and presented across several exhibitions.
During each exhibition, I create a large-scale wall drawing live in the space.
The title, inspired by a Calvinist motif from my childhood, evokes questions of good and evil, sin and temptation, and the search for the “right” path.
The drawing (with charcoal) is created spontaneously, without preliminary sketches: I begin with points and lines, letting forms emerge intuitively. Each development on the wall comes as a surprise even to myself, reflecting an inner dialogue between control and chance. The resulting composition weaves together personal memories and symbolic imagery, forming a visual meditation on moral and spiritual dualities.
Integrated within the drawing are Augmented Reality (AR) codes. When scanned, they open animated scenes: the eye of God follows my every step, while a code printed on my back alternately reveals white and black wings. Angels and demons thus symbolically take possession of me as I traverse the “broad and narrow way” through the act of drawing. As the performance unfolds, further digital figures and scenes emerge, expanding the world that grows out of the drawing.
In the exhibition space, the AR layers are made visible via a webcam feed that can be projected onto a wall or displayed on a monitor, and can also be explored directly by visitors on their smartphones. A second screen shows continuously updated video recordings of the drawing sessions, which evolve throughout the exhibition.
The 3D figures in the AR environment likewise develop over time, generated from the drawings themselves.

The work was last performed during the exhibition In Transition, Galerie VBK Berlin, 4–26 October 2025
See also: www.vbk-art.de/intransition/the-broad-narrow-way-maria-korporal/
Full performance program: www.vbk-art.de/intransition

 

The work was created as part of the project Qalvinist Qosmos; an earlier version of this performance was shown earlier this year at INSELGALERIE Berlin.

 

Qalvinist Qosmos. As the Deer Pants

Qalvinist Qosmos. As the Deer Pants

Highlights, Qorporal Quests, Recent Works & Highlights, Videos, Works

This is a short trailer. The full video is 7:21 minutes long and is shown in festivals or upon request.

A winged figure—myself—walks the narrow path beneath a vast, dark sky. The ever-watchful Eye of God looms above, while surreal, hand-drawn animations emerge and evolve in the cosmic expanse. This autobiographical video work blends real footage with animated sequences, revisiting the lasting imprint of my Calvinist upbringing. A little girl—my younger self—hops beside me, singing solemn psalms recorded by my grandfather when I was just two years old. As she sings, the handwritten words of the psalm appear above her head—only to morph into shifting symbols of faith, labor, and existential reflection. The rigid commands of Mens, werk! (Human, work!) dissolve into Denk! (Think!), unraveling into a fluid, ever-transforming universe.
As the path bends into a distorted world, a deer appears, longing for God, just as Psalm 42 dictates. Yet the cycle remains unbroken: I walk on, the child sings, the Eye watches. Qalvinist Qosmos is not a return to faith but a meditation on its echoes—a digital-analog exploration of doctrine, control, and the subconscious imprints of early religious conditioning.
The title’s distinctive “Q” spelling connects this work to my Qorporal Quests series, in which I critically examine the global digital evolution in times of war and climate change by combining analog and digital techniques, encouraging reflection along the way.

The video is also available in an immersive 360° VR version, to watch with a headset.
Please contact me for more information or a preview.

The video is part of the multimedia project Qalvinist Qosmos.

title: Qalvinist Qosmos. As the Deer Pants
technique: Experimental video, 360° reframed, digital and analogue animation
length: 7’21”
year: 2025
sound recordings: Recordings of the artist as a 2-year-old girl, singing Psalms 81:1 and 42:1, by the artist’s grandfather, digitized by the artist’s brother, Jurgen Korporaal
background sound: Solfeggio-417-518-Peace.mp3 by the_very_Real_Horst, freesound.org/s/206001 – License: Attribution 4.0
other sounds, project concept and all artwork: Maria Korporal

© Maria Korporal 2025

Exhibitions and presentations:
• November 6-16, 2025: Terni Film Festival 2025 “Il Mondo Nuovo – Si vis Pacem para Pacem”, Cinema Politeama, Terni, Italy.
• September 6-19, 2025: rem (Rapid Eye Movement), Galeria Sztuki Rozruch, Poznań, Poland.
• August 24 – September 28, 2025: Weites Feld, Kulturmühle Perwenitz.
• April 11 – May 11, 2025: UPDATE 25, Galerie VBK Berlin.
• January 23 – March 8, 2025: MeeresStern, INSELGALERIE Berlin.

Qalvinist Qosmos

Qalvinist Qosmos

Highlights, Installations, Interactive works, Qorporal Quests, Recent Works & Highlights, Videos, Works

In my series of works Qorporal Quests, I explore the challenges of the digital world in times of crisis by combining analog and digital techniques—ranging from charcoal drawings and flipbooks to virtual reality, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence—encouraging reflection along the way. Following works on science, climate change, and artificial intelligence, this work, Qalvinist Qosmos, focuses on religion.

Although I have been an atheist since the age of twelve, I grew up in the Netherlands in a Calvinist family. In my project Qalvinist Qosmos I process these formative experiences. It combines personal memories with an artistic reflection on the contemporary role of Calvinism, where notions of sin, the devil, and the longing for God shape life.

A central work is the large-scale wall drawing The Broad & Narrow Way, which I create live during exhibitions. Inspired by the Calvinist image of the same name, I add QR codes to the drawing that, when scanned, generate animated augmented reality scenes. These are projected onto another wall while simultaneously appearing on visitors’ smartphones. A recurring symbol is the eye of God, which – as in my childhood – watches over my every step. A special code on my back makes white and black wings appear alternately while I draw, so that angels and demons symbolically take possession of me as I step onto the “broad or narrow path.”

In parallel, the project also includes the 360° VR video Qalvinist Qosmos. As the Deer Pants. In it, I walk winged along the narrow path, while drawn animations cross my way. Beside me, a little girl – my younger self – skips along, singing solemn psalms recorded by my grandfather when I was only two years old. > The video has its own dedicated page – with trailer and further information.

 

Exhibitions and presentations:
• October 4-26, 2025: In Transition, Galerie VBK Berlin. Augmented reality drawing performance The Broad & Narrow Way
• September 6-19, 2025: rem (Rapid Eye Movement), Galeria Sztuki Rozruch, Poznań, Poland. Video + virtual reality Qalvinist Qosmos. As the Deer Pants
• August 24 – September 28, 2025: Weites Feld, Kulturmühle Perwenitz. Video + virtual reality Qalvinist Qosmos. As the Deer Pants
• April 11 – May 11, 2025: UPDATE 25, Galerie VBK Berlin. Video Qalvinist Qosmos. As the Deer Pants
• January 23 – March 8, 2025: MeeresStern, INSELGALERIE Berlin.

Italia Media Art Festival

News

Maria Korporal was a guest artist in the first edition of the Italia Media Art Festival, which took place from the 25th to the 27th of October, as part of the Rome Art Week, at the Gazometro of Rome during the Maker Faire. She showed her augmented reality video installation QLIMATE QRONOBOT – AI and the Future of Our Planet

October 25-27, 2024 in Rome
Opening hours: 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Location: Gazometer of Rome
Address: Via del Commercio 9

Official website: https://www.italiamediaartfestival.it

Click here to download the press release (docx, in Italian)

Qlimate Qronobot

Qlimate Qronobot

Highlights, Installations, Interactive works, News, Qorporal Quests, Recent Works & Highlights, Videos, Works, ,

AI and the Future of Our Planet

The work is an installation with an augmented reality object and video projections.

The Qlimate Qronobot is a robot-like object composed of cubes, with each side printed with scannable black-and-white codes. These codes activate various augmented reality (AR) scenes, featuring an animated, multicolored interplay of analogue chalk drawings, AI-generated shapes and texts, and smaller virtual cubes that engage in a complex ball game.
With this work, I explore how AI could play a role in addressing climate change – hence the name Qlimate Qronobot, where “qrono” introduces a time-related dimension to the robot.
I asked an online AI: “Imagine you are the Qlimate Qronobot and I ask you what you can do to combat the climate crisis and save our planet. What would you answer?” The AI provided several responses, which I incorporated into the AR scenes. These answers are accessible only through the use of technology, emphasizing that AI and other digital advancements are fundamentally dependent on energy resources. This highlights the inherent contradiction: while AI holds potential, its usage is closely tied to energy consumption.

In the installation, the Qlimate Qronobot is illuminated by a video projection of a dystopian 360° landscape, that covers both the object and the wall behind it. Alternatively, it can also be illuminated by a light source. A ceiling-mounted webcam captures the rotating Qronobot and its codes, which are then processed by a preconfigured computer to trigger the augmented reality scenes. The computer is connected to a projector, which displays the AR scenes on a separate wall. The grey tones of the 360-degree landscape are transformed into rainbow colours.

Guests can also scan the robot with their smartphones and look inside it – the augmented reality can be seen both on visitors’ mobile phones and on the projection in the adjacent space. This way, people become part of the augmented reality projection.

Maria Korporal introduces her Qlimate Qronobot

Maria Korporal introduces her Qlimate Qronobot (click on the image to open the video)

The installation on exhibition in GG3

The installation on exhibition in GG3 Group Global 3000 (click on the image to open the video)

“Qlimate Qronobot” is part of the project Qorporal Quests: a series of multimedia installations where I interrogate global digital development in times of war and climate change. Solutions are presented through the interplay of analogue and digital technology.

Exhibitions and presentations:
• March 12-31, 2025: Rencontres Internationales Traverse 2025, Toulouse, France.
• October 25-27, 2024: Italia Media Art Festival, as part of Rome Art Week at the Maker Faire, Gazometro of Rome.
• July 19 – August 16, 2024: Qlimate Qronobot. AI and the Future of our Planet. Solo exhibition by Maria Korporal in GG3 / Group Global 3000, Berlin. In this exhibition the artist will also show her videos Passing By, Give us back our shadows, Breathing Bags, Wandel and The Wishing Table.

Text by Simone Dompeyre, art director of Traverse Vidéo, in the catalogue of the Rencontres Internationales Traverse 2025:

 

 

A quick walk in the exhibition in GG3 Group Global 3000
(click on the image to open the video)

Some impressions of the exhibition at the Italia Media Art Festival:

Qat Qube

Qat Qube

Installations, Interactive works, Prints & Objects, Qorporal Quests, Recent Works & Highlights, Works

QAT QUBE
Is Schrödinger’s Cat Dead or Alive?

An augmented reality project between analogue and digital
by Maria Korporal

How would we interpret the digital signs if we were locked in a bunker without electricity and internet? This paradox is the central question of my previous project Qorporal Qodes, which combines a virtual reality space with analogue flipbook animations. With this new installation Qat Qube, I continue working and exploring the theme, this time using augmented reality.

At the center of the installation is a floating cube, beckoning viewers to discover its secrets. Each of the cube’s sides is imprinted with a code that can be scanned with a smartphone, revealing a vast array of animated charcoal drawings that bring the cube to life. As viewers explore the cube’s interior, they will enter a world of surprise and uncertainty as Schrödinger’s cat teeters between life and death.

Inspired by Schrödinger’s famous thought experiment*, the Qat Qube allows viewers to peer inside the box where the cat resides. However, what they see is determined by a random principle, ensuring that uncertainty remains at the heart of the experience. To explore the combination of multiple conceivable states, viewers can touch a button labeled “reload for other quantum qats,” which reloads the augmented reality view with different animations, revealing other possible realities.

Qat Qube also includes two flipbooks that offer an analogue way to experience augmented reality. Each flipbook contains an animation sequence that can be viewed by flipping through the pages, as well as by scanning a QR code printed on the back of the book. The animations, based on charcoal drawings, depict both a dead and a living cat, encapsulating the duality that lies at the core of the Qat Qube experience.

title: QAT QUBE – Is Schrödinger’s Cat Dead or Alive?
technique: AR-installation composed of a cardboard cube 20x20x20 cm with printed codes, and two flipbooks 15×21 cm
© Maria Korporal 2023

Exhibitions:
• March 12-31, 2025: Rencontres Internationales Traverse 2025, Toulouse, France.
• March 14-29, 2024: Rencontres Internationales Traverse 2024, Toulouse, France.
• November 24, 2023 – January 12, 2024: Digitales Chaos, Moderne Erhabenheit, Green Hill Gallery – Kulturschöpfer e.V., Berlin.
• October 12-14, 2023: Videomedeja 27th International New Media Art Festival, KS Svilara, Novi Sad, Serbia.
• October 6-29, 2023: IRRITATION: a maximum aesthetic confusion, Galerie VBK Berlin.
• June 3 – July 16, 2023: Irritation – The Art of Getting Lost, Vebikus Kunsthalle Schaffhausen, Switzerland.

Click here for the catalogue of Rencontres Internationales Traverse 2024, with a text about Qat Qube by Simone Dompeyre

Screenshots of the text:

QAT QUBE in the exhibition “Rencontres Internationales Traverse”:

 

QAT QUBE in the exhibition “Digitales Chaos, Moderne Erhabenheit”:

 

QAT QUBE in the exhibition “IRRITATION – a maximum aesthetic confusion”:

 

QAT QUBE in the exhibition “Irritation – The Art of Getting Lost”:

 

* The thought experiment of Schrödinger’s cat imagines a cat and an unstable atom in a box. If the atom decays, a poison gas is released and the cat dies. The experiment shows that the cat is both alive and dead at the same time until someone opens the box to observe what happened. This is because when a system can be in two different states, it can also be in a combination of both. The experiment highlights the idea that until an observation is made, a quantum system can exist in a combination of multiple possible states, which may seem paradoxical and defy our classical intuition.

Questioning Qats

Questioning Qats

Highlights, Installations, Qorporal Quests, Recent Works & Highlights, Videos

This is the trailer/presentation of the 360° VR movie and installation “QUESTIONING QATS – Ceci n’est pas un chat” by Maria Korporal.

“Ceci n’est pas un chat” (This is not a cat) – with this contemporary parody of the well-known statement by surrealist painter René Magritte, Maria Korporal explores the identity of AI chatbots, playing with the changing meanings of the word “chat” in French and English. Is a chat a cat?

On a wooden laptop with chalkboards, an entertaining dialogue takes place through chalk animation, where the artist alternates between asking questions in French and English to lure a chatbot into giving an explanation of its identity. The conclusion: “An unreal cat in a virtual chat” is meaningful for the scene of the virtual reality film – a surreal 360° landscape with undefinable objects and structures, and some notably large cats, all in angular low-poly style. The artist generated this landscape using artificial intelligence and then intervened with human touches, ranging from analogue to digital.

In addition to the animated wooden laptop mentioned earlier, there is a rotating spherical head of a retro electric typewriter spreading characters across the ground, occasionally forming concepts. Numerous animated pastel drawings with signs and symbols are scattered like moving graffiti over the structures in the landscape. A rotating sphere – or is it a black hole? – reveals a whirlwind of characters and texts, sometimes experiencing a short circuit.

An important element is formed by the dialogues between the chat-cats, which appear as running text on a few walls. The artist opened two ChatGPT browser windows and copied the questions and answers from one chatbot to the other and vice versa. In this way, two chatbots talk with each other. The result is stunning: dialogues about favorite books, interests and wishes emerge without human intervention. This makes us wonder: Do chatbots really have an independent identity?

The virtual reality film “Questioning Qats – Ceci n’est pas un chat” can be experienced with any VR headset or on a computer screen with a mouse.

The film can be presented independently or as part of an installation, where the wooden laptop in material form is included. A code on the laptop can be scanned giving access to a 3D animated chat-cat in augmented reality.

The soundtrack of the work was composed with the electromagnetic emissions of routers, switches and fans in a server room, found in the public domain, interrupted by cat sounds generated by the artist on a small meowing synthesizer.

“Questioning Qats – Ceci n’est pas un chat” is part of the project Qorporal Quests: a series of multimedia installations where Maria Korporal interrogates global digital development in times of war and climate change. Solutions are presented through the interplay of analogue and digital technology.

Exhibitions and presentations:
• December 2-7, 2024: Field of View, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA.
• September 10-15, 2024: #NarrarElFuturo: X Festival de Cine & Nuevos Medios, Bogotá, Colombia.
• February 23 – March 10, 2024: Wahrheit Wirklichkeit Realität, Galerie VBK Berlin.

Concept, images, camera, drawing, animation, editing, sound, AR programming © Maria Korporal, 2024

The blank model for the 3D cat in the AR part is by Brenna Souza – sironai and was downloaded from Thingiverse under license CC BY-NC: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2574178/makes

An Unreal Cat in a Virtual Chat

Highlights, Videos, Works

“Ceci n’est pas un chat” (This is not a cat) – with this contemporary parody of the well-known statement by surrealist painter René Magritte, Maria Korporal explores the identity of AI chatbots, playing with the changing meanings of the word “chat” in French and English. Is a chat a cat?
On a wooden laptop with chalkboards, an entertaining dialogue takes place through chalk animation, where the artist alternates between asking questions in French and English to lure ChatGPT into giving an explanation of its identity. The conclusion: “An unreal cat in a virtual chat” sounds like a compromise, but also makes one reflect on the extent to which artificial intelligence is based on truth.
The wooden laptop exists in material form and can be presented as an object in exhibitions as well. A code on the laptop can be scanned giving access to a 3D animated chat-cat in augmented reality.
The soundtrack of the work was composed with the electromagnetic emissions of routers, switches and fans in a server room, found in the public domain, interrupted by cat sounds generated by the artist on a small meowing synthesizer.

“An unreal cat in a virtual chat” is also presented as part of the installation / VR video Questioning Qats – Ceci n’est pas un chat, belonging to the project Qorporal Quests: a series of multimedia installations where Maria Korporal interrogates global digital development in times of war and climate change. Solutions are presented through the interplay of analogue and digital technology.

title: An Unreal Cat in a Virtual Chat
technique: Experimental video and animation
length: 3’38”
year: 2024
concept, camera, drawing, animation, sound, effects and montage: Maria Korporal

© Maria Korporal 2024

Screenings and presentations:
• from May 14, 2025: Bologna in Lettere 2025 – International Poetry & Video-Art online exhibition.
• February 23 – March 10, 2024: Wahrheit Wirklichkeit Realität, Galerie VBK Berlin.

Keep in touch to be informed about screenings!

Wahrheit – Wirklichkeit – Realität

News,

Exhibition in Galerie Verein Berliner Künstler
Schöneberger Ufer 57, 10785 Berlin

February 23 – March 10, 2024

Artists: Steffen Blunk, Christoph Damm, Christian Ebel, Kim Dotty Hachmann, Andreas Helfer, Karsten Kelsch, Maria Korporal, Jonathan Meese, Katrin Salentin, Anna Staffel, Dietmar Spiller, Ila Wingen

Opening: Friday 23.02.2024, 19h
Introduction: Ila Wingen, 19:30h
Performance: Anna Staffel
Music: Andreas Helfer (trumpet) and Peter Lindenberg (drums)

Artist talk: March 3, 2024, from 16h
with an improvisation by: Dietmar Spiller (words) and Stephan Groß (guitar)

Finissage: March 10, 2024, 16–18h

Concept and curation: Christoph Damm.

A catalogue will be published to accompany the exhibition.

• Download invitation flyer in PDF

In this exhibition Maria Korporal shows her new multimedia VR-AR installation QUESTIONING QATS – Ceci n’est pas un chat.