So throughout the last 12 weeks I’ve been making work that I’ve never done before and really challenging myself. I’ve only ever worked digitally but I’ve fallen in love with the physical and tactile. Through my research into VR exhibitions I haven’t found any that are tactile. I’ve designed a concept of a tactile exhibition. As VR is becoming increasingly popular, I want to push the boundaries and showcase ‘digital tactility’ and artistic expression using this platform. The Exhibition would be split into two parts.
Part One: I want to mix the real and the digital together and create a virtual exhibition in VR. This part of the exhibition would be a fully curated environment made in VR. Textures and elements would be recreated physically to mimic the virtual environment. This allows us to create an immersive surreal environment in which you can ‘Touch’ the surroundings and get some tactile feedback in the real world. An example of this would be hanging material from the ceiling in the physical space and then having vivid hanging vines and greenery in VR. This is a massive undertaking but I’m hoping I can mock it up as well as possible. If you have a VR headset at home you can still visit the exhibition but you will miss out on the tactile element. You can however interact with part two of the exhibition.
Part Two: This part of the exhibition would allow individuals around the world and physical visitors to interact with each other and create the exhibition themselves. A number of VR headsets would be available and the individuals can make anything they’d like. Create models, write words and add to others work. The exhibition would be built on working together to create an expressive random environment.
There was a similar project on reddit a few years ago called r/place. Anyone was able to join and paint on a big digital canvas but they were only able to put down 1 pixel every 5 minutes. Against all odds, some actual coherent drawings were made. It’s super cool to see people from all around the world band together to create this.
See the timelapse here:
Virtual reality is still a gimmick for a lot of people. I want to challenge that convention and show that it’s not just games with bad graphics and rollercoaster simulators. We can actually come together and make art.
Outcome
The outcome this week is more of a mock up as this would be very costly and real life and the Tilt Brush platform isn’t quite ready for multiple people working on the same document at the same time. I have however drawn a possible interactive hallway in which participants would walk down on their way to the gallery. In VR, this is shown as a cave with roots sticking out of the walls, and vines/ropes hanging from above. These trees and roots would be recreated in the physical world. This would mean that when touched in VR, you could feel them in real life.
There is a ‘portal’ at the end of the hallway (just an open doorframe in real life) that leads into the gallery space. When participants walk through the immersive hallway and enter the gallery, the scene would change to an open space with transluscent walls, these walls make it so they guests can see where the walls are in real life but it would still give the illusion of infinity. This room would then become the space in which these guests can draw with each other and honestly do whatever they liked with the platform. There would be a 24hour window in which people could visit and create, from then on the creation tools would be locked and new visitors can see the finished piece. There is so much potential for this medium and I hope that one day I get to finalise it and bring it to life.
My favourite part of this idea is that it’s just a blank room in the real world. It comes alive in VR. Virtual Reality can be such a breathtaking experience when done correctly and I can’t wait to see what the future holds for it.
You can also interact with this corridor/cave here:
https://poly.google.com/view/dRVuV_30Kro
Having never used Tilt Brush before this week I had a lot of help learning my way through by Danny Bittman. An incredible VR artist who you should look out for. He created a tutorial on how to create these corridor style artworks and I was heavily inspired by him and his design. Link to his work here:
Conclusion
I would love for this mixture of virtual and physical immersion to come to fruition. It’s definitely not limited to my idea and If I don’t end up creating this I hope someone else does.
mbetts.design.blog 