Epic Games recently acquired 3D object hosting service Sketchfab and Quill has been used to create a range of animated projects like Dear Angelica. After Tilt Brush was open sourced, a number of other projects used the code to built art-based VR apps and we’ll be curious if creators will rally around the Quill file format in a similar way.
New VR headsets like Quest Pro, an Apple device, and a next-generation VR system from Sony are expected to launch in the coming years. We’ll be following closely how tools evolve for creating content in VR that might be integral to those future systems.
Flinders Quarter Augmented Arts Walk is one of many attempts to revive the city’s economic hub. But is it working?
Paris has its Latin Quarter and Barcelona its Gothic Quarter, but who ever knew Melbourne had a Flinders Quarter? Running from Flinders Street to Collins, down Elizabeth and up Swanston, it takes in some of the city’s most famous laneways, including Degraves Street and Centre Place. The name’s provenance is disputed – it may or may not have come about when the area was dominated by the rag trade – but it appealed to the organisers of the Flinders Quarter Augmented Arts Walk.
Many cities have self-directed cultural tours, but the key difference here lies in that word “augmented”. A close cousin of virtual reality, augmented reality (AR) is a way of enhancing a physical object – for example, a piece of art – with digital elements accessed via technology, in this case a smart phone. All participants need do is download a free app called EyeJack, point it at the art, and watch as the work metamorphoses on the screen.
Flinders Quarter Augmented Arts Walk is one of many attempts to revive the city’s economic hub. But is it working?
Paris has its Latin Quarter and Barcelona its Gothic Quarter, but who ever knew Melbourne had a Flinders Quarter? Running from Flinders Street to Collins, down Elizabeth and up Swanston, it takes in some of the city’s most famous laneways, including Degraves Street and Centre Place. The name’s provenance is disputed – it may or may not have come about when the area was dominated by the rag trade – but it appealed to the organisers of the Flinders Quarter Augmented Arts Walk.
Many cities have self-directed cultural tours, but the key difference here lies in that word “augmented”. A close cousin of virtual reality, augmented reality (AR) is a way of enhancing a physical object – for example, a piece of art – with digital elements accessed via technology, in this case a smart phone. All participants need do is download a free app called EyeJack, point it at the art, and watch as the work metamorphoses on the screen.
Galleries and museums are integral parts of international culture, yet in a time when the world is reeling from a pandemic and social distancing, the arts are suffering. Covid forced galleries and museums to shut their doors, leading to a complete halt in visitors and more importantly, income. In 2020, the market value for the global arts industry reduced by 22%, down from $64.4 billion in sales in 2019 to $50.1 billion. Technology, namely mixed reality, could transform the way traditional arts and artefacts are experienced going forward, and save the industry.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and augmented reality (AR) products are quickly rising to popularity and becoming increasingly understood by the mass market, with virtual reality (VR) and AR now household terms. Mobile technology is ingrained into our lives, so it is a natural progression that digital experiences will take over the arts industry too.
Digital solutions such as desktop AR and mixed reality could be the answer to the challenges faced by the arts. By taking simple images of a physical piece, virtual representations of any artefact can be formed. People can view them as holographic images from the comfort of their homes and get a unique, personal perspective of art and history. Without the restrictions of velvet ropes and glass tanks, those who choose to soak in culture can do so with a 360 view of their desired object.
NFTs represent one-of-a-kind entities that function as a source of ownership over a virtual image. They are designed to prove a collector’s ownership over a particular digital item, as well as giving artists the chance to sell art for which there may not be a thriving physical market.
World-renowned digital artist Beeple has recently highlighted just how prevalent NFTs are becoming within the arts and culture sector, through selling his unique collection entitled “Everydays — The First 5000 Days” as an NFT for $69 million. This landmark digital sale highlights the opportunity for financial success, if the arts and augmented reality universes collide. In a similar sense, museums across the globe have digitised 7,500 3D images of their collections yet are at loose ends as to what to do with these images. Some museums, however, have started to make use of augmented reality; The Smithsonian, for example, has developed software that brings items from the Bone Hall back to life, yet there are still many museums failing to make the most of this technological movement.
Mixed reality presents financial solutions to struggling galleries and museums
Museums are typically publicly owned, getting most of their funding from taxes and donations, but the recent economic downturn has led to underfunding of the arts and culture sector. A UN report recently highlighted that 43% of museums faced closure in the first quarter of this year. NFTs can be an extremely lucrative opportunity for these institutions to upscale their revenue streams.
Museums and galleries which are currently facing financial shortcomings may find sanctuary in becoming accustomed to the digital collectables market through selling NFTs. Whilst it may be easy to pass off NFTs as just another passing technological fad, there are tangible economic benefits to adopting them long term.
These institutions are sitting on an abundance of artefacts, perhaps collecting dust, which could simply be waiting to be digitised and sold to generate additional income. Financing these objects as NFTs will in turn ensure income to cover operating expenses for the museum as a whole, whilst saving them the insurance costs of moving artefacts internationally, as they will exist digitally. Once a piece is tokenised and firmly minted on a blockchain, those NFTs can be sold, and as often is the case in the collectables community, they will be sold for respectable sums of money.
It is not solely the institutions that will reap the financial benefits of mixed reality projects, artists will too. The trading of NFTs is a transparent process, and creators have the option to receive percentages of future resales of their work, which is impossible for physical art sales.
NFTs meet the consumer demand for digital viewings
Seeing that footfall is at an all-time low for museums and galleries, there is a growing global demand for virtual methods of viewing artefacts. If institutions decide to utilise augmented reality software, they have the option of sharing their items internationally, for an entirely new and extensive audience to bear witness to. NFTs also offer each valuable item a form of preservation.
From immersive experiences in-house to at-home desktop AR facilities, museums and galleries can utilise augmented reality to provide an entirely new perspective on their historical pieces and meet the wider demand for digital entries into the culture they have to offer. This demand is also mirrored by artists themselves, who are desperate for income and are keen to utilise NFTs and mixed reality to disseminate their work to a wider audience.
From million-dollar trades to desktop AR bringing history and culture into people’s homes through their screens, there is a technological revolution afoot. Static art is being drawn into the mixed reality universe, and it might just have the power to save the industry.
Thanks to Tilt Brush going open source, we already have Multibrush from Rendever, a free multiplayer version of the groundbreaking VR app available now for Quest via SideQuest. It’s also coming soon to App Lab so you won’t have to sidelaod it.
We figured it was only a matter of time before someone released a multiplayer version of Tilt Brush, but admittedly I thought it would take a little bit longer than a week and a half or so. Luckily, the ingenuity of VR developers knows no bounds.
MultiBrush is out now on SideQuest, where you can sideload the app onto your headset to check it out and collaborate with other VR users online. This is an early 0.01b version of the app so you should expect some issues here and there.
According to the developers from Rendever:
“When Google announced it was open sourcing Tilt Brush last week, Rendever Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer Tom Neumann immediately went to work developing a multiplayer version of the popular app that gives creators a way to make art in virtual reality. Within 10 hours, the team developed a working prototype of multiplayer – a feature that has been eagerly requested by Tilt Brush users for years. Given Rendever’s mission to improve health through social VR experiences, Neumann and his team were able to leverage their extensive expertise to develop this version in record time.”
Since Rendever have already confirmed the app is definitely coming to App Lab very soon, you could just hold off if you wanted to avoid sideloading. It hopefully won’t be too long before you can just access it directly from an App Lab page. Here’s more details on how to download App Lab games onto your Quest without even needing a PC at all.
Or you can grab it now on SideQuest. Let us know what you think!
Last week Google announced it would soon be shutting down Poly, its online platform for storing and sharing 3D assets made in apps like Tilt Brush, Blocks and others.
The news has wide-reaching implications for many VR artists that had depended on the service for the past few years. Those artists, especially those working with Google’s own creative VR tools, will need to download their existing libraries before the service is taken fully offline on June 30th 2021 and then find a new home for that work. For some, though, this is about more than the inconvenience.
UK artist Rosie Summers has been storing her work on Poly for the past three years. She regularly relies on Google’s services as a means of preserving and promoting her work. Indeed, even sharing her work from Poly in this post below takes just a few simple clicks to embed. Though if you’re reading this after June 2021 those embeds probably aren’t there anymore.
“Poly is the centerpoint of the VR artist community,” Summers told me. “So many creators rely on the site as an easy way to share and promote their works with their audiences. I’ve recently released my VR advent calendar that users download via Poly, so followers can join in with the festivities. I use Poly’s 3D viewer nearly every day to share work in progress with clients, as being able to navigate a scene in 3D is so much more immersive than a couple of screenshots.”
But Summers also says that Poly provides a crucial pool of resources for other applications, allowing easy importing of VR-made assets to create unique virtual assets. “Applications such as VRChat, Wave, and ARize have all had the ability to integrate artworks from Poly to create immersive landscapes, exhibitions and galleries that groups of users can experience together,” she adds. “Lots of artists used platforms like this to promote and sell their digital artworks, so Poly shutting down means a vital revenue stream is lost during a pandemic that is proving to be exceptionally tough on creative industries.”
The strains of the COVID-19 pandemic aren’t the only reasons Summers says the timing is less than ideal. “To me the timing of the shutdown is particularly odd, as the cost of entry to VR is rapidly falling, and it feels like the XR content revolution is about to begin. Poly would and should have been a key component in the digital asset space.”
In the wake of the news, many people have pointed to a similar third-party resource, Sketchfab, as a suitable replacement for Poly. Summers, however, says that many of Poly’s alternatives still don’t have the basic support and features that Poly offered for free, like unlimited private hosting. “Poly is more than a site, it’s a community at the core of the digital VR art revolution, and shutting it down will fracture the community,” she says.
To that end, Summers is now promoting a recently-launched petition. It asks not for Google to roll back its Poly plans but instead make the platform open source so that others may continue to carry the torch. The petition has amassed over 500 signatures at the time of writing, and Summers also has hopes for other alternatives. “A community-led effort to create an open-source replacement to the site is already in the works, hoping to re-implement and improve on Poly’s core features, in a way that keeps artworks and heritage safe from being lost to time when large corporations choose to no longer support a platform.”
Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry From an AI interaction with a deceased black artist to a Punjabi granny making a sandwich, this show explores identity through the generations
Keith Piper’s THIRTEEN DEAD remains relatively unknown. Yet the 1982 work was one of the earliest artistic responses to the previous year’s fire at a house party in New Cross, south London, that took the lives of 13 young black people.
Handwritten words appear with pictures of the victim’s face on a series of postcards placed across a width of charred patterned wallpaper and skirting board: “Sister Yvonne survived with us 15 years in Babylon. On the dawn of her 16th year, Babylon sniffed her out.” The explicitness of the work is deeply affecting. Anger isn’t an emotion you expect to feel in an exhibition inspired by a poem (Wallace Stevens’s Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird), and yet, the more you absorb the details of this work – the victims’ baby faces, the burn holes – the more you appear to be at the mercy of your own rage.
Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry From an AI interaction with a deceased black artist to a Punjabi granny making a sandwich, this show explores identity through the generations
Keith Piper’s THIRTEEN DEAD remains relatively unknown. Yet the 1982 work was one of the earliest artistic responses to the previous year’s fire at a house party in New Cross, south London, that took the lives of 13 young black people.
Handwritten words appear with pictures of the victim’s face on a series of postcards placed across a width of charred patterned wallpaper and skirting board: “Sister Yvonne survived with us 15 years in Babylon. On the dawn of her 16th year, Babylon sniffed her out.” The explicitness of the work is deeply affecting. Anger isn’t an emotion you expect to feel in an exhibition inspired by a poem (Wallace Stevens’s Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird), and yet, the more you absorb the details of this work – the victims’ baby faces, the burn holes – the more you appear to be at the mercy of your own rage.
The BFI London film festival’s exciting and enchanting new strand – LFF Expanded – mixes recorded, virtual and live experiences. It’s a pivotal moment for performance
‘Pivot” – to stay on the spot while turning to a new direction – is a word much bandied about in cultural organisations right now, as they look for ways forward while the Covid crisis has suspended normal activity. Like all live arts, dance has pivoted heavily towards the screen, and to “blended” on-site and online access. Fortuitously, screen arts are simultaneously turning towards the live: this year, the BFI London film festival launched LFF Expanded, a new strand dedicated to virtual reality, extended reality, augmented and mixed realities, immersive and 360° experiences – a ragtag set of labels all trying to capture the sense of “convergence” (as the lingo has it) between recorded, virtual and live experiences.
I went to LFF Expanded on site at London’s BFI Southbank (it’s online too, but you don’t get headsets, or help at hand) to find out how dance and VR/XR are interacting. Acqua Alta (on-site only) is a delightful pop-up book – yes, just white paper and black ink – by French company Adrien M & Claire B. The 10 spreads fold out into different scenes from the story, but the magic comes when you view them through a computer tablet: two inky silhouettes – miniature, motion-captured versions of dancers Dimitri Hatton and Satchie Noro – emerge from the paper and step and swirl around, off and up from the page. The enchantment comes not from deceiving our senses – the illusion is entirely undisguised – but from the superimposition of animated fantasy on to material reality.
Bruno Martelli and Ruth Gibson’s Dazzle Solo is titled as such not because it has a solo performer, but because it is a single-user version of an interactive, multi-user gallery installation, currently on hold. As for “dazzle” – well, imagine a cross between Oskar Schlemmer, Bridget Riley, Merce Cunningham and a liquorice allsort, and you get a sense of the vibe. Its inspiration was the legendary Chelsea Arts Club Ball of 1919, where partygoers dressed up to imitate the black-and-white dazzle camouflage (AKA razzle-dazzle) used on naval ships. In Martelli and Gibson’s environment, you can jump between different scenes, each with their own giddying perspectives, algorithmic choreography and psychedelic dancing figures – humanoid, geometric or entirely abstract – that can pass right through you like digital ectoplasm. It’s pure fantasy – and dazzling though it is, the rarefied solo experience feels a little self-isolating. I can imagine the unquarantined gallery installation being more of a ball.
The BFI London film festival’s exciting and enchanting new strand – LFF Expanded – mixes recorded, virtual and live experiences. It’s a pivotal moment for performance
