Reach Out and Touch This Virtual Reality Art Installation – Smithsonian

SmartNews Keeping you current A screenshot of William Wheeler's VR creation showing a barren, sandy landscape to explore (Essex Flowers)

smithsonian.com August 18, 2017

There's only so much space in a gallery to hold art, but one New York venue has figured out a clever way to get around this problem,reports Benjamin Sutton forHyperallergic.

For its latest show, the Chinatown gallery Essex Flowers is showcasingthe work of 15 artists in a400-square-foot space. How? Thanks to some virtual reality wizardry. Rather than having theworks physically occupy the space,the exhibit, titled"The Sands,"lives entirely in the VR headsets thatvisitors don when they enter the exhibit.

The innovative solution allows the works on view to be rotated through an endlessvirtual space. Visitors can reach out andinteract with, and even walk through, the curateddisplays.

"The works in this show...simply share the same space and time in ways that are sometimes funny, sometimes poignant, and occasionally even discordant," the gallery writes in a description of the exhibit.

The show's name draws inspiration from the legendary Las Vegas hotel and casino of the same name, where Frank Sinatra and many other stars of the mid-20th century could often be found. Even though it was demolished more than 20 years ago, the casino lives on strongly in the American cultural memory today, serving as ashorthand for agolden era of Las Vegas inthe 1950sfull of ambition, glamor and arrogance.

"It was a place both physical and imaginary, where fantasies came true and where realities transformed into myth," the gallery writes.

Essex Flowers isn't the first artistic venue to make use of burgeoning virtual reality technology. Last year, The Dal Museum inFlorida allowed visitors to literally step inside a surrealpainting, while London'sTate Modern museum plans to employ VR technologyto simulate the early 20th-century Paris in an upcoming exhibit on the career of artist Amedeo Modigliani.

The Sands will run in Essex Flowers, located inNew York City's Lower East Side, until Sunday, August 20.

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Reach Out and Touch This Virtual Reality Art Installation - Smithsonian