The culture clash between high art and modern gaming has always fascinated Irish-born artist John Gerrard, but few of his projects have brought these worlds together quite like his latest Manchester International Festival piece.

Infinite Freedom Exercise is a hyper-realistic projection on an enormous LED screen in Lincoln Square.

A film of a man locked in perpetual movement set amidst a desolate backdrop in Iran, Infinite Freedom Exercise is a comment on power and how we sustain ourselves in the real and virtual worlds we inhabit.

But it’s much more than clever commentary. Across the course of the day, the sun will rise and set in real time (in line with Iran’s time zones, naturally) but otherwise it acts independently on a set of pre-programmed instructions; once the film begins, it uses a set of original conditions in its memory to create the movement.

And so while there’s a social and political comment to be read into the footage itself, Infinite Freedom Exercise is a technological step forward for this kind of video art – and one that’s taken five years to prepare for.

The full cycle of the footage is 365 days, so it evolves in real time, but it is not cinema – the embedded computer creates its own logic. “It doesn’t have intelligence as such,” explains John, “but it derives from a set of portraits of motion using motion capture.

“So in those motion capture images, you have maybe 50 x, y and z points that you can adjust in real time over time, so you can have a perpetually evolving performance develop in real time.

“I’m piggy-backing on gaming really using those same real-time virtual worlds. But mine could never exist online because it’s such high resolution.

“His motions are very realistic and the virtual camera glides around this figure very, very slowly – everything is very seamless. And what I’m hoping it people will wait for him to finish his action, and of course he never does.

“There’s a kind of cruelty in that, a kind of psychosis which I’m interested in.”

John hopes his ‘temporal structure’ – which will be completed by specially installed viewing benches – will encourage people to stop and watch, and perhaps reflect on their own busy lives.

“It’s strangely hypnotic,” he says, “and so with these sorts of works we find people really sit down with it.”

John, who is based in Vienna, says that MIF is spreading the reputation of the city worldwide, and he believes this year’s programme – which also includes ground-breaking work from Marina Abramovic, The Quay Brothers, duo Šejla Kamerić& Anri Sala, and co-curators Klaus Biesenbach and Hans Ulrich Obrist who have created 11 Rooms at Manchester Art Gallery – will significantly further that profile.

“Manchester is becoming extremely well known in arts terms around unique commissions, but the festival’s level of ambition is also becoming globally acknowledged,” he says.

“It’s an extraordinary context in which to show my own work.

“There are multiple projects in the programme I can’t wait to see.

“There’s a very broad socially inclusive element to the festival, and I work in social sculptures completed by the presence of the public.

 “I think it’s a rich context to show in and it will be an experimental event.”

Lincoln Square, July 5-17, free. For details of all other arts exhibitions, visit mif.co.uk.

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