{"id":1950,"date":"2018-02-10T18:10:54","date_gmt":"2018-02-10T18:10:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/?p=1950"},"modified":"2021-01-13T14:54:45","modified_gmt":"2021-01-13T14:54:45","slug":"laura-gascoigne-visual-experience-with-knobs-on-march-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/?p=1950","title":{"rendered":"Laura Gascoigne: Visual Experience with Knobs On – March 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Laura Gascoigne
March\/April 2018<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Royal Academy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Tennant Gallery a man in goggles is lurching around waving his arms like someone conducting an orchestra on ketamine. It could be a piece of performance art, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s too amusing. In fact the man isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t air-conducting, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s air-drawing and the results are appearing in real time on a screen.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Time is the only thing about this operation that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s real because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an experiment in virtual reality, one of three \u00e2\u20ac\u0153exploring emerging technologies\u00e2\u20ac\u009d connected with the RA\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s exhibition From Life. The technology comes courtesy of HTC Vive, the exhibition\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Virtual Reality Partner, and coincides with the launch of VIVE Arts, a multimillion-dollar VR program \u00e2\u20ac\u0153set to change the way the world creates and engages with the arts\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The air-drawing exercise is the contribution of Humphrey Ocean RA, its object being to create a 3-D figure to occupy a chair in virtual space. The figure on this occasion looks like Jabba the Hutt made of dayglow Play-Doh, and not wanting to blunder about like a blindfolded idiot and draw something worse I choose the Yinka Shonibare option of entering a neoclassical painting by Gavin Hamilton, with added Townley Venus draped in batik. A warning to VR goggle-wearers: do not adjust your set. I twiddled a knob at the side of mine, imagining they were binoculars, and it looked as if Gerhard Richter had taken a squeegee to Hamilton\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s view until the attendant fixed it. Even then the visual experience felt no more real than a 3-D view of the Acropolis seen through a 1950s stereoscopic slide viewer. But contemporary armchair travellers wishing to enjoy it in the comfort of their homes may be pleased to hear that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s available on Viveport HTC\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s global VR app store. Like most things digital, Virtual Reality poses as \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcshared experience\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 but is essentially sol-app-sistic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Along with Google Arts & Culture, another partner of the RA show, HTC VIVE has been busily \u00e2\u20ac\u0153investing in the arts and culture space\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. The same company is behind The Ochre Atelier in Tate Modern\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Modigliani exhibition, a virtual recreation of the artist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s last Paris studio with the declared aim of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153bringing visitors closer to the artist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s world\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. Unlike the VR experiences in From Life, for which on a weekday afternoon I was the only taker (the man in goggles being an off-duty attendant), on a Saturday evening The Ochre Atelier attracted a half-hour queue. Fortunately I had taken a copy of The Jackdaw for company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a relief to find that as a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153seated experience\u00e2\u20ac\u009d this doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t involve floundering about like a fool in public, and the visual quality is also far more \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcreal\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. You sit in a chair between the stove and the easel while a cigarette burns endlessly in an ashtray and street noises drift in through an open window. When you fix an object in your sights the voice of a Tate curator divulges a related snippet of information, such as the extraordinary fact that drink was a comfort to Modigliani, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153not a vice\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c something that will be a comfort to piss artists everywhere. What fascinated me was the half-open frosted window through which, by craning your neck to the left or right, you can catch glimpses of the buildings opposite. I was seriously tempted to get up and look out of it. But as far as getting an insight into an artist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mindset \u00c2\u00ad\u00e2\u20ac\u201c as opposed to headset \u00e2\u20ac\u201c you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d learn more from a visit to a living artist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s studio. You might even get a drink.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Studies reveal that gallery-goers spend less than 30 seconds in front of a picture, yet they are prepared to queue for 30 minutes for a 6-minute VR experience. Why? Because looking no longer counts as an experience. VR is just another step in the creeping annexation of the concept of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcexperience\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 by technology, until people no longer trust their senses to work unaided without some sort of digital prosthesis. The VR people smell money in art and they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re getting in there. Last year in Knokke the VR company BDH marked the 50th anniversary of Magritte\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s death with a cinema installation in a bowler hat \u00e2\u20ac\u201c \u00e2\u20ac\u0153an illusion Ren\u00c3\u00a9 would adore\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, cooed the critic of Le Soir \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and for the Bosch500Fest in \u00e2\u20ac\u2122s-Hertogenbosch they installed a virtual Garden of Earthly Delights in the artist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s studio. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We are impressed by the authenticity of the experience,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d declares the festival\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s director Lian Duif on the company\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s website. The reaction of the man on the street in Austin, Texas enjoying the experience via Google Cardboard Viewer is more effusive. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153This painting is 500 years old? The whole thing? That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wild, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dope, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 500 years old!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dali will be next, as sure as clocks is cheese. In the meantime, contemporary artists are getting on board. A new VR platform, Acute Art, which launched in January with a mission to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153encourage art\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s transition from the physical art world to the new age\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, has signed up Olafur Eliasson, Jeff Koons and Marina Abramovic. Eliasson has created a VR rainbow, Koons is working on resuscitating the Greek courtesan Phryne \u00e2\u20ac\u201c as a shiny Phryne, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153to bring the affirmation of self into VR\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and Abramovic, concerned about \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the climate crisis shaking the IRL world\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcIn Real Life\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 world to you and me) is developing an interactive work giving audiences the option of saving her avatar from rising waters in a tank or leaving her to drown. Which would you choose?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not to be left behind, during Nobel Week in Gothenburg last December Anish Kapoor gave assembled Laureates a preview of his debut VR work, Into Yourself-Fall, and took part in a discussion with Daniel Birnbaum on the theme of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcArtistic Truth in Virtual Space\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. Birnbaum popped up again in January as curator of the Verbier Art Summit, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcMore than Real: Art in the Digital Age\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, at which keynote speakers included Eliasson and Acute Art\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s founder Dado Valentic. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Technology will change art in the most fundamental way,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Birnbaum predicted, paraphrasing Walter Benjamin in his statement that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153it is art\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s task to create a demand which can only be fully satisfied later\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. And there was me thinking that was the task of business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is possible to do good things with VR. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m prepared to believe that Alejandro I\u00c3\u00b1\u00c3\u00a1rritu\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 6-minute VR essay Carne y Arena recreating the experience of Mexican migrants crossing the Sonoran desert into America deserved the special Oscar it was awarded last November. Film directors tend to make better films than artists. And VR is a useful tool for reimagining ancient sites like the Baths of Caracalla, or restaging historic events like Mat Collishaw\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s recreation at Somerset House last summer of Fox Talbot\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s first photographic exhibition. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not so great, yet, at \u00e2\u20ac\u0153fully immersive, experiential sexual technology\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as attempted by Ed Fornieles in Truth Table: Be Everyone, Fuck Everyone at Carlos\/Ishikawa last September, though the porn sites are working on it. But however good the quality gets, VR will never bring us closer to an artist than standing a foot away from the surface of a canvas painted 500 years ago. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wild, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dope. No invention of technology will ever be more miraculous than the naked eye, an instrument whose pleasures most of us have not begun to exhaust. Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not forget how to use it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Laura Gascoigne March\/April 2018 In the Royal Academy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Tennant Gallery a man in goggles is lurching around waving his arms like someone conducting an orchestra on ketamine. It could be a piece of performance art, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s too amusing. In fact the man isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t air-conducting, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s air-drawing and the results are appearing in real time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[742,75],"class_list":["post-1950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","tag-comment","tag-laura-gascoigne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1950"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1951,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1950\/revisions\/1951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}