Real Girlfriend, A Pantheon
(Zodiac Edition)
3D Modeling, Animation, and Virtual Environment Contributions
Real Girlfriend is a performance-based work that interrogates digitally constructed femininity and the inherited archetypes shaped by the male gaze. Originating in augmented reality, the project assembles a composite figure drawn from the visual language of virtual culture—simultaneously familiar and destabilizing.
Artist Pearly Lii‘s work explores the emotional dissonance between intimacy and mediation. A projected avatar, driven by motion capture and live input, engages audiences in real time, creating a feedback loop between performer, projection, and viewer. The “girlfriend” becomes less a character and more an interface and a speculative presence that reflects desires for connection while exposing the asymmetries of attention, care, and expectation embedded in digital relationships.
My contributions focused on the construction and animation of this virtual presence. I developed 3D character assets using DAZ, and created animation and compositing workflows in Cinema 4D to support the avatar’s expressive range and real-time responsiveness. In parallel, I designed a series of animated GLB contextual sculptures that extend the project into spatialized digital form.
These GLB pieces were exhibited within New Art City, an experimental browser-based environment emerging from NEW INC and Rhizome’s Art & Code Track. This platform shapes a nontraditional exhibition space composed of four interconnected environments, each conceived as a kind of digital “garden.” Rather than replicating the neutrality of a white cube, these spaces embrace density and multiplicity: layered landscapes populated with AI-generated elements, livestreamed media, and hybrid sculptural forms.
Across these environments, the animated GLB works function as textual sculptures; objects that oscillate between language and form, visibility and disappearance. Surrounded by textures of digital residue and fragmented visual systems, the work contributes to an ecosystem that feels alive, unstable, and collectively authored—extending Real Girlfriend beyond performance into a distributed, networked encounter.
Process
Pearly Lii facial capture > Daz 3D recreation > C4D environment and animation
Real Girlfriend Exhibited
During her residency at JO-HS, Mexico City, Lii’s “Huozhu, Real Girlfriend” is placed in a real world setting.
Huozhu, Real Girlfriend (Day & Night)
404 x 720px.mp4
Zodiac Edition
‘Domesticada’ at JO-HS, Mexico City 2022
Curated by Elisabeth Johs
Pearlyn Lii, “Huozhu, Real Girlfriend” 2021; documented by Nico Croes, courtesy of nonstudio, New York.
Collected by Michael Brown of Speaklow NYC
