Explore a Blender and Unity-created environment using Oculus Rift through DiMoDa, The Digital Museum of Digital Art. The experience lives online and in IRL starting November 14 at TRANSFER gallery, Brooklyn. Created by new media artist Alfredo Salazar-Caro and William James Richard Robertson in 2013, the VR exhibition platform will now showcase a first batch of artwork by Claudia Hart, Tim Berresheim Jacolby Satterwhite, Salvador Loza and Gibrann Morgado.
When wearing the device, virtual explorers are immersed in the digital museum, reveling a mind-blowing journey within the gallery’s offerings. While artists have total creative freedom and control of their own space, DiMoDa offers a non-linear virtual museum experience.
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This IRL installation not only improves existing digital creativity, but lends itself to the role of accelerated ideas. DiMoDa is a vehicle for the collection of artworks and the experience of digital creations within a VR context and an open call to curation in the digital era. We asked Salazar-Caro and Richard Robertson a few questions to learn more about the main purpose of the DiMoDa project:
Aquanet 2001, Salvador Loza and Gibrann Morgado
The Creators Project: Can you briefly introduce DiMoDa ?
Alfredo Salazar-Caro: DiMoDA is something that Will and I came up with back in 2013 with the purpose of providing new media artists/ digital artists a virtual exhibition space/ playground for limitless experimentation. We want to make VR accessible to any artist that has the vision for it.
Jacolby Satterwhite
What were the different inspirations that lead you to develop DiMoDa?
Will and I have chatted a lot about this, as we both have a background doing large collaborative projects. Will helped administer and organize several of the Gli.tc/h festivals in Chicago as well as co-operating TriTriangle, a new media gallery focusing on live audio visual performance.
Back in 2011, I began the project [STREET_TEAM] which consisted of guerilla-style installation with a micro projector of several new media artists working in GIF and video, as a way to give equal footing in “the museum” to these art forms. For myself, architecture has been a huge influence. I’m also an installation artist/sculptor so my relationship to space is very prevalent in my practice. I wanted to create a virtual building that could fulfill my architecture dreams without the need to “be an architect”.
In terms of philosophy it’s safe to say that Will and I were both influenced by ideas of Copyleft (copy-it-right) and other free-flow of information schools of thought. I would attribute being introduced to these thought processes to some of our contemporaries such as Rosa Menkman, Nick Briz, Paul Hertz and more.
Tim Berresheim
Can you explain in what DiMoDa is different of the others online & virtual exhibition spaces ? What is its uniqueness ?
FIrst and foremost, we want to go as far away as possible from the white wall model. We always have discussions about these VR galleries, that just put you inside of something that you could see practically anywhere else, they “hang” a JPEG on the wall and think they are revolutionizing the world. We really want to take advantage of the power of VR and we hope that as the technology becomes more powerful, we’ll be able to push those boundaries even further.
We also want to focus on the quality of our exhibitions. One often problematic symptom of net.art and a lot of new media is that it’s produced fast and it’s outputted fast to keep up with an ever-hungry internet. We want to exhibit only twice a year, and only under five artists each time, in order to assure that we create high quality and masterful experiences that can stand on against any work of art of any discipline.
Claudia Hart
What’s next for DiMoDa ? Any Ideas ?
We are currently in discussions for our upcoming Summer 2016 exhibit as well as preparing for our IRL Show in Miami Beach during Art Basel. After that we will be showing in Berlin at an undisclosed location. We will also (almost perpetually) continue to polish the experience of the museum itself as we fix bugs and improve the overall user experience.
Inside view of the museum
The Digital Museum of Digital Art:DiModa exhibition runs through December 19th at Transfer Gallery, but you can also turn your laptop into a DiMoDa portal by clicking here. DiModa is affliated with The Wrong, New Digital Art Biennale.
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