VR FORM- Research/Reading Assignment

A painting isn’t just the picture on the canvas, but the frame, the colors, the texture, the size, the research, the sketches, the time it was made, the voice of the artist and the audience deciding that that’s a painting and not a photography.

1. What will make your work be what it needs to be? What will make your work an artwork? What Form your work will be? What does the audience will see when they enter the location where the exhibition will take place? Form here is the entirety of the work: from the usb cord to the user experiencing the VR images.

2. Read one of these articles with your group and discuss/reflect/answer these questions above.  Write 200-500 words about the FORM of your VR work -  Include at least one detailed sketch of what we will see at the exhibition location. 

3. Make an entry to your website and share the link here in Canvas.

After reading and discussing “Virtual Realities in Contemporary Art With ‘Beautiful New Worlds” we really liked the idea of combining the aesthetics of the virtual world with the natural world. We thought that this concept played very nicely with the themes of our project so far, since our story revolves around humans trying to relive nature and Earth through the help of virtual reality. 

In order to make this vision happen, there needs to be some element of the relationship between technology and the real world represented in the physical space before the user enters virtual reality. Including technical aspects in the real world will help make our piece an artwork because it will solidify the meaning of our art and how it plays on the idea of what is “true” reality and what is “tech” reality. The art piece itself will be mainly experienced in virtual reality, however, before one enters the virtual environment, we want to include projections of nature including leaves, animals, flowers, etc. People in this physical room will be able to see the person currently wearing the VR headset with a projection of nature images onto their own body and clothing. This will allow people to see a glimpse of the meaning of our piece (intersection of the real world and virtual world) without actually being in the piece.

We also came up with an idea to add on to this concept, combining the real world with the virtual world. There would be a second projector, facing in the opposite direction of the one with nature, and it would be projecting what the person in the VR headset is seeing. This would allow any of the people around watching to also experience the piece somewhat, while also serving as another layer of “meta,” mirroring the scene in our piece where the final person is monitoring the people’s realities in the piece.