It is commonplace that Art has the ability to push every kind of boundary. With the new technological evolution the idea that Virtual reality (VR) might play a transformative role in human lives, including the way they express creativity, has recently spread.
The famous Mexican film director Alejandro González Iñárritu won a rarely-awarded Special Achievement Oscar last year for his powerful VR installation Carne y Arena, which dramatized the plight of migrants trying to cross the US-Mexican border.
This year, Art Basel in Hong Kong has for the first time an Official Virtual Reality Partner HTC VIVE, which presented two new virtual reality artworks by Marina Abramović and Anish Kapoor.
Anish Kapoor, Into Yourself, Fall
Into Yourself, Fall, takes users on a journey through the human body, experiencing the sensation of falling into yourself via the immersive headset. Kapoor’s work seeks to simulate vertigo as a descent inside the human body, depicting a labyrinth of the inner workings of the self.
A Frame of "Into yourself, Fall"
Marina Abramović, Rising
Marina Abramović’s Rising addresses the effects of climate change by transporting viewers to witness rising sea levels. Viewers enter an intimate virtual space, where they come face-to-face with the artist, who is slowly drowning inside a glass tank. The philosophical question at the heart of Abramović’s work, she says in a filmed trailer, is whether the new degree of immersion enabled by VR can result in increased empathy.
The Avatar of Marina Abramovic in "Rising"
Both works are recognizable evolutions of the previous artworks of the artists both for the addressed themes and the aesthetics they used, but the new medium gives to them a new power and above all a new immersive experience. Only the future will tell if augmented reality will be universally recognized by artists as a new way of expression, we just have to wait and see where the digital evolution of art it will take us.
Stay Tuned on Kooness magazine for more exciting news from the artworld.