culture – Page 10 – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

September 21, 2019

Artist James Merry: ‘It’s beautiful seeing tears coming out of the bottom of a VR headset’

Björk’s co-creative director a talks about translating the singer’s Vulnicura album into an out-of-body virtual reality experience

Artist James Merry, 37, has been working with Björk since 2009; they were introduced by a mutual friend while Merry was studying ancient Greek at Oxford University. He moved to New York to work with her, and played a vital part in her 2011 album, Biophilia, on which each song was accompanied by an interactive app uniting concepts of music, science and nature. Merry has remained Björk’s right-hand man through her 2015 breakup album Vulnicura and this year’s Utopia, as well as making her elaborate masks and headpieces. Their latest project is a full virtual reality version of Vulnicura in which seven VR videos by different directors follow Björk’s path through heartbreak and recovery in the Icelandic landscape, from a verdant valley into a dark lava tube and out the other side. Merry lives and works in Iceland.

September 17, 2019

Frieze London installs its first augmented reality work

Visitors to Regent’s Park will see hovering ice slabs visible only through mobile app

First there was Pok émon Go. Now lovers of contemporary art can join the fun by tracking down shimmering, thought-provoking sculptures in a London park.

Frieze London art fair has installed its first augmented reality artwork. “No shipping, no installation costs,” said its director, Victoria Siddall. “It is interesting for us to be able to test the boundaries of what sculpture can be.”

Frieze London and Frieze Masters are in Regent’s Park in London from 3-9 October.

September 17, 2019

Frieze London installs its first augmented reality work

Visitors to Regent’s Park will see hovering ice slabs visible only through mobile app

First there was Pokémon Go. Now lovers of contemporary art can join the fun by tracking down shimmering, thought-provoking sculptures in a London park.

Frieze London and Frieze Masters are in Regent’s Park in London from 3-6 October.

September 12, 2019

No Man’s Sky Beyond – a childhood fantasy realised

Hello Games; PS4 (version tested); PC; Xbox One
As a Star Wars generation kid, the VR experience of this almost made me tearful: it’s beguiling and transporting

When the original version of No Man’s Sky released three years ago, the dreamy, highly esoteric space exploration game divided opinion with its obtuse narrative and lack of previously hinted multiplayer components. Since then, developer Hello Games has ceaselessly tweaked the experience and released two major downloadable updates, Next and Beyond. Now, the whole package is available as a physical release for the PlayStation 4, providing the ultimate version of one of the most ambitious titles of the modern era, which also happens to be a wonderful showcase for the console’s virtual reality capabilities.

Playing No Man’s Sky Beyond with a VR headset (a feature also accessible on the PC version via Oculus Rift, Vive and other headsets) is an almost mystical experience. Standing on an alien world, watching as the branches of strange flora rustle in the breeze and starships fly in formation overhead is utterly beguiling and transporting, while maintaining a true sense of physical presence. Holographic menus pop up on your HUD, indicating notable mineral deposits and undiscovered creatures, and if you’re using the PlayStation Move controllers you get a wonderfully physical interface for the game’s crucial mining laser.

September 6, 2019

Cold war experiments and storybook monsters – back to Venice’s VR island

Now in its third year, the virtual reality section of Venice is making serious forays into documentary territory.

The 76th Venice film festival has included sci-fi thrills and comic-book action, backstage melodrama and medieval court intrigue. During the event’s most escapist moments, anyone longing for a dose of reality would have had more luck finding it in the virtual world.

Venice VR is a pioneering festival sidebar dedicated to showcasing the best examples of an emergent art form, with a programme of 40 VR works from around the world. Now in its third year, the section already appears to have turned more mature and serious in its focus. “New art forms usually gravitate towards dystopian fantasy and escapism,” says Liz Rosenthal, Venice VR’s co-curator. “But we’re now seeing projects that are more interested in human relationships and social issues. It’s all got a lot more sophisticated.”

September 3, 2019

Traveling While Black: behind the eye-opening VR documentary on racism in America

In the Emmy-nominated virtual reality project, viewers are given an immersive historical experience on the depressingly topical dangers of being black in America

The theatre has luxurious red velvet upholstered seats, grand ceilings and gilded trimmings. The rows of chairs stretch back into the ostensible blackness, with light beaming from the projector room. Ahead, archival footage of stylish black travelers pack the screen as an unseen narrator discusses the hardships of mid-20th-century black travel. Enabled by modern technology but trapped by racist social convention, their trips were eventually greatly eased by the publication of the Green Book, which listed safe spaces for black people to sleep, eat and replenish.

July 19, 2019

Tetris Effect review – makes your skin tingle and your mind hum

PC, PlayStation 4; Monstars/Resonair/Enhance
This euphoric puzzle game pleasurably hijacks your neural pathways (and your emotions)

There’s a phenomenon in video games that people call “the zone”: a state of mind-body oneness where your reflexes and senses feel that they are operating without conscious input. The zone isn’t the territory of blockbuster shooters or narrative adventures: it is the domain of puzzle and rhythm games, arcade shmups, games about patterns and reflexes. These are games that temporarily and pleasurably hijack your neural pathways.

Enter Tetris Effect, fittingly named for the hypnagogic hallucinations experienced by people who’ve spent so much time stacking blocks that they visualise falling tetrominos whilst falling asleep, or idly imagine arranging furniture into neat lines. First released last year on PlayStation 4 and newly available on PC, it is a sumptuous, mind-altering, humanist interpretation of the classic Soviet puzzle game. It combines the simple, pleasing act of fitting shapes together until they disappear with intense visual backdrops and dynamic music that shifts and bends around your play. If you have the equipment, it does all of this in sensorily immersive virtual reality.

Tetris Effect is out 23 July on PC (out now on PS4).

July 10, 2019

Microsoft to open first European store in central London

Firm shows commitment to UK with shop, which features a gaming lounge and AR devices

Microsoft is opening its first European store on Oxford Street, in London, featuring a McLaren Senna car customised as an Xbox driving simulator, a gaming lounge and a community education centre where children can learn to code.

The 22,000 sq ft shop is a block away from the Regent Street Apple store, which, when it opened 15 years ago, set the bar for tech retailing.

July 8, 2019

In the age of deepfakes, could virtual actors put humans out of business?

In film and video games, we’ve already seen what’s possible with ‘digital humans’. Are we on the brink of the world’s first totally virtual acting star?

When you’re watching a modern blockbuster such as The Avengers, it’s hard to escape the feeling that what you’re seeing is almost entirely computer-generated imagery, from the effects to the sets to fantastical creatures. But if there’s one thing you can rely on to be 100% real, it’s the actors. We might have virtual pop stars like Hatsune Miku, but there has never been a world-famous virtual film star.

Even that link with corporeal reality, though, is no longer absolute. You may have already seen examples of what’s possible: Peter Cushing (or his image) appearing in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story more than 20 years after his death, or Tupac Shakur performing from beyond the grave at Coachella in 2012. We’ve seen the terrifying potential of deepfakes – manipulated footage that could play a dangerous role in the fake news phenomenon. Jordan Peele’s remarkable fake Obama video is a key example. Could technology soon make professional actors redundant?

June 28, 2019

The female game designers fighting back on abortion rights

Through video games, live-action role-playing games and interactive documentaries, developers are challenging the conversation around reproductive rights

The year is 1972. You’re part of an underground network of feminists in Chicago that provide illegal (at the time) abortion services to vulnerable, pregnant people with few options. Despite the risk of imprisonment, and the ways that your personal experiences may not always perfectly align with your activism, you persist.

It’s emotionally complicated. It’s politically fraught. It’s a live-action roleplaying game by Jon Cole and Kelley Vanda called The Abortionists, which requires three players, one facilitator, six hours and a willingness to dig deep into the painful history of reproductive rights in the United States. That history has terrifying relevance in 2019, as numerous states pass laws that put their residents in a reality where abortion is functionally illegal. Based on the real-life work of a 1970s activist group called Jane, it challenges its participants to think about the “internal landscapes” of its players, and how they deal with the larger political and personal landscape of their world.