Royal Academy of Arts takes on virtual art

Its creators promise an exhibition unlike any other: visitors to the Royal Academy of Arts in London will soon be allowed to do something most galleries would frown upon – interact, walk through and even, over the creation

Three young artists from the Royal Academy’s School have teamed up with Taiwanese technology company HTC to create this unique exhibition of Virtual Reality art.

But Artist, Eliott Dodd foresees a challenge.

“The challenge is mostly starting from scratch on something you’ve never used before. It’s like being presented with a new tool that you don’t understand, but there are triggers there that you do understand, kind of intuitive ways of working from using other computer software.”

A virtual reality studio also strips away many of the constraints a traditional artist faces and, in this respect, artist Eliott Dodd has found his early experiments rather liberating.

“There’s a lot of experimenting to do because all the software is in its early conception,” he said.

“No one quite understands how these drawing softwares are going to end up being used, maybe commercially or in the arts so everything you’re doing feels quite unknown,” he added.

The artists will use two programs to create their works – Tilt Brush, a painting program and Kodon, a 3D modelling app.

HTC is providing the hardware with its Vive virtual reality system.

Senior Vice President of Virtual Reality at HTC, Rikard Steiber said: “The exciting thing about virtual reality is that for the first time we’re bringing the real world together with the imaginary, or the virtual, world. And as you can see here tonight we’re having artists going into the virtual world, create new pieces of art and then we’re going to bring them out of virtual reality into the real world as 3D printed objects – so that’s a world first.”

“‘Virtually Real’”, the Royal Academy’s first exhibition of Virtual Reality art, opens to the public from January 12 to 14.