Visitors to the Palais des Congrès de Montréal can join a major extended reality (XR) exhibition, which launched on 19 January and will continue for several months.
The event takes place at the Palais’ OASIS Immersion, Canada’s largest permanent venue for immersive content curation. The massive 2,200 square-metre facility has three immersive galleries — Portal, Teleporter, and Panorama — to host events, two huge light installations, and other amenities for attendees.
The 80-minute-long event, transformé, offers attendees a “futuristic, moving, and even transforming journey” of immersive art, where people can view the world from the perspectives of several characters, it said in a statement.
Latest trailer for transformé @oasisimmersion
An 80-minute walkthrough exhibition reimagined from eight immersive works (including Goliath) originally designed for VR headsets, transformé offers an inspiring perspective into the power of courage and empathy.
🎟 link in bio pic.twitter.com/aSr6Actlw9
— Anagram (@weareanagram) January 24, 2023
Eventgoers can also interact with eight artworks via 360-degree projections designed from virtual reality (VR) headsets. The immersive VR experience leverages high-definition projectors to recalibrate the work in the collective public space.
The immersive experiences feature VR-to-Projection mapping technologies and explore themes such as courage and empathy with stories from real-life events.
Goliath, a project from Anagram and Floreal Productions, scored a Grand Jury Prize for VR experiences at the 28th Venice Film Festival in 2021.
OASIS Immersion’s transformé
Denys Lavigne, Chief Executive and Co-Founder of OASIS Immersion, said in a recent statement,
“The transformé exhibition sprang from a desire to explore the idea of converging individual-based virtual reality immersion with our own Oasis brand of collective immersion, for the purpose of building a narrative around shifting our perspective to others’ point of view, so we may recognize how powerful a force courage and empathy are in our lives. More concretely, the transformé immersive walkthrough per se tells compelling stories, layered over rich visuals and sounds and spectacular installations, which we believe speak to our times”
Sanj Surati, Founder and Digital Atelier for Tiger Heart, served as the Directeur de Projet Technique to curate the VR experience using 360-degree film footage. He worked closely with Anagram Director Barry Gene Murphy, its Co-Founder May Abdalla, and OASIS Immersive teams to realise the project.
He also hosted numerous talks at the Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) 2022 in Barcelona to discuss the future of immersive content curation and other key XR themes.
Van Gogh Distortion Event
Along with transformé, OASIS Immersion has also hosted the follow-up to the sold-out Van Gogh Immersive Experience. The series’ Distortion instalment follows the critically-acclaimed inaugural tour of the artist’s life and curated hundreds of unreleased and reinvisioned works from the Dutch legend.
Exhibition Hub and entertainment platform Fever hosted the collection of reinvisioned masterpieces in VR-to-Projection format.
East London’s iconic arts district hosted the exhibition at Commercial 106 in Shoreditch in June 2021. At the time, Mario Iacampo, Chief Executive of the Exhibition Hub, told XR Today that virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) technologies could transform the artworld.
He explained further that such technologies could “provide a fun and safe way to enjoy entertainment again, and a welcome reimmersion into art and culture.”
He lauded the Van Gogh Immersive Experience as a “visually stunning and a new, interactive way to explore the post-impressionist genius [of Van Gogh] and his work”
Web3 Art Takes Off in US, UK
Along with Oasis Immersion, Canada’s neighbouring country, the United States, hosts a major Web3 artwork exhibit from the RF.C Collection.
Founded by Mathemetician, Blockchain Investor, and Aorist Founder Pablo Rodríguez-Fraile and Architect and Designer Desiree Casoni, the Beyond Digital exhibition will curate artworks from some of the world’s top Web3 artists.
Beyond Digital kicked off on 10 February and will run until 14 March. Themes explored in the virtual exhibit include merging the digital and physical realms.
A world-leading digital art collection, the exhibition will showcase artworks from legendary Digital Artists Refik Anadol, Mike Winkelmann, or Beeple, Pak, Andrés Reisinger, and many others.
Currently on view in Beyond Digital:@beeple – Beeple: Spring Collection 2021 with custom collector’s @infiniteobjects displays and packaging@DanielArsham – The complete series of “Eroding and Reforming” Collections from @niftygateway pic.twitter.com/6PUz4wZDzT
— Venus Over Manhattan (@V_over_M) February 21, 2023
The Web3 event will feature leading non-fungible tokens (NFTs) displayed across mediums such as screens, framed prints, and other objects. This aims to show the massive creativity and potential for hosting digital art and superimpose creative content across the physical world.
Anadol’s artwork incorporates algorithms, machine learning (ML), and AI to create his visions, showcasing how digital art can offer major enhancements compared to analog productions.
This Friday (13 May) @Coventry2021‘s The Reel Store opens! This is the first permanent immersive digital gallery in the country and it’ll be showing the world premiere of Refik Anadol’s Machine Memoirs: Space ➡️https://t.co/DiXz5ufNpg#ACEsupported through @TNLUK pic.twitter.com/gm3JDaoMtt
— ACE Midlands (@ace_midlands) May 11, 2022
The Reel Store, the United Kingdom’s first-ever permanent Web3 and digital art gallery, also displayed Anadol’s Machine Memoirs: Space art collection last year. The Coventry-based facility resurrects communal space from the former Coventry Telegraph newspaper office and opened its doors with Anadol’s immersive masterpiece.
The Turkish-American artist crafted his collection with two million photographs from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). He said in a statement at the time the exhibit “invites us to dream of an alternative universe where machines collaborate with humans to speculate our existence and create an alternative future.”
Renowned British Web3 Artist Matt Collishaw also debuted an impressive art show in February as a joint collaboration with Russian-American artist Daniel Krivoruchko.
The world-class Web3 artists debuted their ‘Heterosis’ art collection of evolutionary NFT artworks, which change properties over time and host exclusive properties for each piece.
Collishaw’s artworks also envisioned a macabre virtual landscape with his BEDLAM exhibition. The mixed reality experience fascinated audiences with interactive high-definition digital content that evolved with the story. The art was also featured at the Venice International Film Festival, captivating audiences at the top film event.
