We’re taking a look at the fine arts world this evening. Ironically the fine arts and architecture have been actively exploring virtual and augmented reality far more than any tech companies have, so we have a lot to learn from them on creating and engaging in content!
How does this Inspire you?
During the workshop we’ll not focus overly much on consumption of this material (which we’ll limit to two tablets we pass around), but see how this can influence your work or make you explore more XR content that you would not normally think of seeing!
It’s very easy to sit in on an “augment reality workshop” and just passively absorb work other people have done, but I guarantee you’ll become a better consumer if you try to create new ideas yourself, even if it’s on sheets of paper!
Colored – Cannes Immersive Winner
“Colored” won the Cannes 2024 Immersive art award. This example is an excellent way in which theater and augmented reality is combined. Viewers at the Pompidou watched “Colored” wearing HoloLenses wandering around a 150 square meter set. The actors were holograms, and the stage is an important component of the film.
The physical space isn’t somewhere you escape from with AR or XR, it’s actually part of the art piece and gives context. You’re in a sacred space with other people viewing the art, and that’s quite beautiful!
The depiction as a play in a real stage set of segregation in 1950s Alabama seems to create a great deal of empathy in the viewer, and “Colored” won the Cannes 2024 Immersive prize.
Commentators also mention how being in a physical jail cell watching a hologram actor makes them feel more empathy for people who lived through segregation in the South.
While there are a lot of technical components, the piece strikes me as so powerful…
I just hope I can see it in person one day!
Clip from Radio France International https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgfM3VTub4E&t=162
Lifeblood, an Augmented Reality Structure
https://www.jamsutton.studio/lifeblood-augmented-reality-sculpture-venice-italy-jam-sutton
A geolocated sculpture in Venice mixing flesh and blood with a sculpture, Sutton’s AR work makes you think! What is refreshing is that the sculpture is combining geolocation augmented reality with a sense of the surroundings, and an understanding of the level of awareness in culture of the people who are present. It’s not just some random bouncy ball placed for no reason in a place, it’s reflecting the history and future of those around it!
Empereur
The immersive film Emperor / Empereur presents a daughter watching her father “suffer aphasia after a stroke.” Unable to talk to the world, she tries to see his reality. This is a beautiful virtual reality film presented at the Venice Biennale…
Watching the “making of” Emperor (you can auto translate) helps spawn many ideas.
What kind of XR art is possible if we step away from the shoot em up game tropes of flashiness?
How can we approach virtual and augmented reality in a more understated way that creates emotional connection?
Eurydice Virtual Reality
EuryDice, a Venice Immersive piece submission from 2022 is a beautiful, understated virtual reality Opera.
Art Fairs in 360 Immersive
The most exciting content at the moment for VisionPro is 360 video content of the world’s great art fairs. For many reasons this level of sophistication and content simply can’t be presented in most of the United States, so it’s a great way to “participate” even from afar.
The US pavilion features the first Native American artist this year, and the galleries wouldn’t be the same outside of the context of the Venice Biennale.
The German Pavilion is also something that would never make its way to the United States for various reasons, so it’s just great to be able to see art fairs from Venice in this way. I certainly hope we can get more of this in the future!
Reliving your Acid House Youth
This is less of a fine arts angle, but draws again on history and the small details that you would miss out on if you hadn’t lived through the time.
This UK VR exhibit also has a set backdrop although it doesn’t use holograms. Again, it doesn’t seek to erase the outside world, as the viewers enter a warehouse with lighting and fans which is weirdly more realistic than any haptic suit.
This isn’t something that would work so well if it were in a mall or was a commercial virtual reality game – the details are too realistic and subtle for most people to understand, and its beauty is that it’s the little things that count.
Again notice how this show doesn’t try to destroy your world around you and transport you to somewhere unreal. It’s very much grounded in reality, which is a fresh view of Virtual Reality I like.
Krzysztof Wodiczko’s Light Projection Art in Tijuana
And artists have been using Augmented and Virtual Reality in beautiful ways for years, light projection being a popular form.
Krzysztof Wodiczko went to Tijuana in 2001 and proposed something unusual! He connected light projections on a large public building to cameras with eight women in Tijuana and had intimate conversations with them. Their faces blown up on a large dome, the women discussed alcoholism, the loss of their families and violence in their lives.
Normally the women in this piece would be ignored, as they are the workers in the maquiladoras (factories run by American companies), but here they are blown up on big screens as large as any Hollywood movie star, showing pieces of their lives that are seen as unimportant by society.
There is no desire to obliterate the surroundings and transport us to a fantasy world where your physical world doesn’t matter. While that’s all right, it’s not common to see VR projects where history and surroundings are seen as part of the XR game or application. This is a thoughtful point of view that the arts gives us, and it can help us grow as engineers and designers.
https://insiteart.org/people/krzysztof-wodiczko
Some thoughts:
In what ways can you create artwork where the unseen voices are heard, or people develop more empathy for those around them?
And how can virtual and augmented reality be made in a way that integrates with the “real physical” world instead of ignoring it, reminding us of our context in time and space?
1 comment on “the Fine Arts in XR Symposium” Add yours →
Comments are closed. You can not add new comments.