More than paint on a wall: Hands-on with VR and AR in art museums from Chicago to Seattle
My juried verdict? AR/VR applications can be be startling and cool, or just museum pieces that don’t do much more than add a layer of technological lacquer to the art.
Seattle Art Museum’s “Double Exposure”
But the portrait animations were mesmerizing, adding a magical depth to the work on the wall. A static figure holding a violin was now playing it. A woman wearing an elaborate Native dress was suddenly dancing in it.
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago’s “I Was Raised on the Internet”
However, neither VR experience appeared real enough to fully immerse me, and the reason may have to do with how quickly our expectations of technology change. Daniel Steegmann Mangrané’s Phantom was created in 2014-15; Jon Rafman’s Transdimensional Serpent, in 2016.
As to my observation of the outdated appearance of some of the VR, Wexelblatt said it actually may provide useful context. “If anything, the aging process opens the door for future viewers and art historians to contend with the convergence of technology and aesthetics at a particular moment in time,” she said.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s “René Magritte: The Fifth Season”
Maybe the best way to understand surreality and abstraction in art is to become one with it, inside a participatory gallery at the end of a special exhibition. That’s what the well-known San Francisco-based design firm Frog (it helped shape the Apple IIc and several early Macintosh models), has done for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s wide-ranging retrospective of the surrealist Rene Magritte.
See the full story here: https://www.geekwire.com/2018/paint-wall-hands-vr-ar-art-museums-chicago-seattle/