Mara Oscar Cassiani's Spirit Avatar Filter for Art Layers

Mara Oscar Cassiani created the Spirit Avatar Instagram filter for Artribune's Art Layers series. The filter is a digital vernacular extension of her ongoing performance Spirit (2017–present), incorporating flames, water, and air elements with a black mesh face covering. It requires specific movements to activate digital flames and reveal an animal skull upon mouth opening, invoking a hyper-contemporary ritual. Cassiani views avatars as descendants of ritual masks, enabling horizontal identity exploration. She critiques the platform economy where users bear creation costs. The filter is her first publicly released one, though she has used face tracking since 2012. She follows creative clouds on Instagram rather than individual artists, citing Miyo Van Stenis, Kamilia Kard, and Giovanni Fredi. Her current projects include Be Water My Friends (Santarcangelo Festival 2021), culminating in a stadium dance, and I Am Dancing in a Room for Italy's first digital residency. Cassiani is a wi-fi-based artist working across performance, choreography, digital languages, social media, and ritual clubbing.