17.–18.5. & 20.–22.5.2022
VR installation: Co-designing Virtual Reality Experiences
Design Museum, Auditorium
In the auditorium of the Design Museum, two installations based on virtual reality will be on display and used as platform for co-design for one week. Here you can study how past museum exhibitions can be revisited virtually and test what playfulness can add to the experience of iconic design objects in a digitally created environment. The installations invite visitors to test and try out!
Both installations are part of European research projects with Aalto university as originator in Finland.
Pop-up VR Museum
Virtual artefacts from the Design Museum collection
In this Pop-up VR Museum experience, users can access, interact, and engage with virtual artefacts from the Design Museum collections. A key feature includes users listening to stories of the artefacts contributed by members of diverse communities as well as reflecting and contributing their own if they wish. This process of experiencing is weaved through gameplay that involves solving certain quests and for example painting in a 3D immersive environment.
SPICE (Social cohesion, Participation, and Inclusion through Cultural Engagement) is an EU Horizon 2020 funded research project coordinated by the University of Bologna and dedicated to “citizen curation” of cultural heritage. Citizen curation refers to encouraging museum visitors to learn more about themselves and develop a better understanding of, and empathy for, other communities. In SPICE, we are designing and developing tools that help communities to share their interpretations and reflections about cultural heritage with others. As a one of the five case studies in the SPICE-project, Aalto university Media Lab team has designed the Pop-up VR Museum with the Design Museum and now museum visitors are invited to contribute to the co-design process. The installation is a prototype and currently in its testing phase.
Read more from the Spice-project webpage
MATTER, NON-MATTER, ANTI-MATTER
Past exhibitions as digital experiences
VR-installation showcases digital models of two iconic past exhibitions. Les Immatériaux (Centre Pompidou, 1985), and Iconoclash (ZKM | Karlsruhe, 2002). Les Immatériaux and Iconoclash are complex thought experiments deployed through space in their respective ways and are both considered landmark shows of the past decades. With the aim of exploring the impact of computer-based information and the shaping of digital realities on all fields of knowledge, they applied innovative forms of juxtapositions between scientific, technological, and artistic practices. What’s more is that they heightened the possibility of the exhibition as a medium and an interface to a sharp level of reflection and creativity.
The installation Matter, Non-Matter, Anti-Matter. Past Exhibitions as Digital Experiences is part of the large-scale cooperation project Beyond Matter, dedicated to novel, digital approaches to exhibition revival, documentation, and dissemination, as well as the artistic, curatorial and museological development of the opportunities presented by virtual representation. The installation is a prototype and currently in its testing phase. Matter, Non-Matter, Anti-Matter is conceived as a travelling installation, exhibited also in Tallinn Art Hall and Aalto University, Tirana Art Lab, ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, and Centre Pompidou Paris.
The project Beyond Matter – Cultural Heritage on the Verge of Virtual Reality is an international, collaborative, practice-based research project led by ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe in partnership with the Aalto University in Espoo, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art in Budapest, Tallinna Kunstihoone, and Tirana Art Lab – Center for Contemporary Art. The project is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union and German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
Read more from the project webpage
Photo: Tao Jiaxin
