Embracing the Future of VR Art Atop a Rooftop Tiki Bar

Virtual Reality and New Media Demos, an art-exhibition-meets-happy-hour organized by Artsy, Moving Image, and SIXTY LES hotel explored VR and AR’s future as artistic mediums. Held at Tiki Tabu, the rooftop bar of the SIXTY LES, the event showcased four eclectic VR and AR art projects accompanied by infused drinks. Will this be the future of revelry?

Drawing Constellation, an AR project by William Pappenheimer and Zachary Brady, combined app interactivity with analog artistic freedom. Upon scanning the project’s QR code with Layar, an augmented reality app, the user can create their own drawing to be added to a moving constellation of drawings, viewable on a nearby monitor. Moving their smartphone camera around also allows the viewer to see the same constellation around him in real time, creating a live representation of artistic exploration.

Photo by Andrew Nunes

Drawing Consetllation, 2016, William Pappenheimer and Zachardy Brady. Photo by Andrew Nunes

Rachel Rossin‘s Save to Web: Call of Duty brings VR into the mix. After placing the accompanying headset on, you are thrown into a virtual scenario where floating figures enact strange repetitive movements. But these movements aren’t arbitrary; Rossin has culled character animations from the Call of Duty franchise in an effort to make these animation cycles “inhabit 3D bodies they weren’t initially intended for.” The result lies somewhere between a purgatory-esque military boot camp and an anatomical exploration of how we translate human movements into digital worlds.

Photo by Andrew Nunes

One of the most experientially abstract of the bunch, To Notice and Remember by Christopher Manzione, Seth Cluett, and Ricky Graham is a VR project that brings a viewer into the middle of a forest made of conjoined points of light. As you explore the the pseudo-natural landscape, sounds of running rivers and crumpled leaves infiltrate the environment, further breaking down the boundaries between authentic nature and VR’s natural world. This heightened sense of realism is a result of the group’s use of LIDAR surveying technology and 360-degree audio recording equipment to create the project’s visual and auditory components.

Still from To Notice and Remember, 2016, Christopher Manzione, Seth Cluett, Ricky Graham. Image courtesy the artists

Alexander Porter, James George, and Mei-Ling Wong, three members of artist collective Scatter, showed Blackout, a work-in-progress VR installation on Tiki Tabu’s grass covered balcony. Transporting the user into an MTA train car that has suffered a power outage and stopped moving, the VR experience evolves into discovering newfound telepathic abilities. As a user stares at other train passengers, she hears the other person’s inner thoughts, ranging from texting anxieties to disturbed, hyper-nuanced thoughts, like a woman who is unnecessarily bothered by a couple on the train who look like they could be related.

For those inherently curious about the lives of others,  Blackout allows a level of headspace-contained voyeurism that is as fascinating as it is mortifying. So will technology’s never-ending quest to turn what is private into public eventually reach our inner minds? It’s a harrowing concept to contemplate.

Still from Blackout, 2015, Scatter. Image courtesy the artists

Find more about the event at Tiki Tabu, here, and Artsy, here.

Related:

You Choose the Lovers in Cassius’ Interactive Music Video

The Artist Is 3D: An Immersive Portrait of Marina Abramović

An Audio-Visual Installation Grows Like Insect Shells In Nature