EX MACHINA
Artists are discovering the unexpected potential of virtual reality and robotics to arouse heartfelt human emotion
How artists including Marina Abramovic are harnessing the power of virtual reality to evoke very real emotions
Anyone who has ever made a pilgrimage to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa will know that it’s a thoroughly disappointing experience. One of the world’s most visited paintings, it is set behind bullet-proof glass and usually obscured by a throng of smartphone-wielding tourists eager to capture its famous subject’s mysterious half-smile on camera. Now, however, there is a new way to see Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece. Commemorating the 500th anniversary of the artist’s death, the museum will launch its first-ever virtual-reality (VR) experience this month, enabling people to see La Gioconda up close, from the privacy of their own home.
The Louvre is not the only gallery to have spotted the potential of VR technology to attract new audiences. In 2017, visitors to Tate Modern’s Modigliani exhibition queued eagerly for the chance to explore a virtual recreation of the artist’s studio, while the Royal Academy of Arts hosted a showcase of works made using Google’s Tilt Brush, which allows users to paint in three dimensions. This year, however, has seen a step change in the willingness of the art world to take VR seriously. Anish Kapoor’s immersive artwork went on show at Frieze New York in May, as part of the fair’s inaugural section dedicated to virtual and augmented reality; later that month, a host of highprofile artists, including Marina Abramovic, Laurie Anderson and Dominique GonzalezFoerster, presented pioneering interactive experiences at the Venice Biennale – usually a reliable barometer of trends in contemporary art.
‘Artists share one very important quality – they can predict the future,’ says Abramovic, when I ask her whether she sees VR as the next creative frontier. For now, galleries and collectors may still be reticent about investing in the technology – ‘they often dismiss it because you just need too much equipment’ – but there is growing excitement around the opportunities it presents, and at least a handful of buyers who recognise the value of being an early adopter. ‘It’s like buying the prototype of the robot – it’s the lure of having the first,’ says Abramovic. She herself has no interest in making money; rather, she is excited by the idea of building on her lifelong passion for interacting with audiences as a performance artist. Her debut VR work Rising, which she produced with the support of the specialist organisation Acute Art, transports viewers into a virtual space that brings them face to face with the artist’s avatar, who is suspended within a glass tank gradually filling up with water. They are then jolted into a scene of melting polar ice caps, where Abramovic makes an urgent plea for compassion towards the environment – the only way to lower the water level in the tank and rescue her from drowning. ‘Video games can be so aggressive, but I wanted to use that same technology to get people thinking about the wellbeing of the planet,’ she explains. ‘When you put on the headset, you feel this real fear of the ice melting and the sea rising. People start thinking differently about these things when they’re actually experiencing them, rather than just reading about them.’
Victoria Chang, the director of Vive Arts (a project launched by the electronics company HTC in 2017 to fund and promote the use of VR in art), believes that the heightened awareness that comes from being inside a virtual world makes this an incredibly effective tool for communicating complex ideas. ‘Because VR is so immersive, it’s like an empathy machine – we can trick ourselves into believing it’s real,’ she says. ‘Done well, it generates very strong emotions, and that’s why artists see the power of it compared with other storytelling vehicles.’ It is also a way for women such as Abramovic to ensure their voices are heard for longer, says Chang. ‘Her medium is her body, but eventually that will perish. With a digital avatar, she’ll be able to continue performing even when she is physically unable to do so herself.’
For a new generation of artists keen to engage with nontraditional audiences, VR may offer an opportunity to break down cultural barriers, cutting through questions of taste to provoke spontaneous, unfiltered reactions. Jessy Jetpacks (her professional name), a Royal Academy of Arts graduate who primarily works with video, sound and animation, says that her ‘relationship with VR is a lot about wonder’, comparing the audience experience to that of
listening to a new song. ‘Most of us have a very honest relationship with music – there’s no codified response in the way there often is in galleries,’ she says. ‘What excites me about the medium is that you’re captive, and quite vulnerable.’ It is precisely because of this vulnerability that she avoids using video-game-style shock tactics in her artworks, which are luminous, beautiful and mysterious, but never deliberately disturbing. In her surrealism-inspired 2017 piece Low Winter Sun, for instance, the viewer is invited on a journey through a misty, night-time desert landscape as a group of women dance joyfully beneath the setting sun. ‘I don’t like using dystopian languages because otherwise all anyone will feel is fear and intimidation in what is already an uncanny environment,’ she explains. Though passionate about VR as a medium, she has concerns about the ability of galleries to keep pace with its complex requirements. ‘It’s not just a case of plugging in – you need the right equipment, and enough time to make the physical setting harmonise with the virtual one,’ she says. ‘When that happens, it’ll be mind-bending.’
One cultural institution that has been at the vanguard of efforts to embrace new media is the Zabludowicz Collection in north London, which opened the UK’s first space dedicated to presenting VR works in 2018. ‘Stalking the Trace’, its recent exhibition of the American artist Rachel Rossin’s ambitious multi-user work The Sky is a Gap was a perfect example of how to make the world within the headset interact sympathetically with the outside environment. On arrival, visitors entered a darkened room lined with arched enclosures reminiscent of the architecture of classical piazzas, with brightly coloured lighting shifting constantly from one mood to the next. Then, on donning the headset, they found themselves transported into a parallel universe, using their bodies to chart a virtual course through an ever-changing landscape. ‘The piece is designed with body-tracking technology, so it’s tethered to where the person is standing – they’re literally in control of how it arranges itself,’ explains Rossin. ‘People tend to want to rush through experiences, so the point is to get the viewer to a state of being present, to understand that everything is up to them.’ A self-taught programmer, Rossin is cautiously optimistic about the future of VR in art. ‘We’re in a period of great technological acceleration, so the language isn’t going to be completely legible to everyone, and a lot of work simply panders to the novelty of being in this space,’ she acknowledges. ‘But it’s a really powerful medium that has the potential to tell us so much about how we perceive ourselves and others.’
As a testing ground for human responses and behavioural traits, VR has a great deal in common with another emerging technology, artificial intelligence (AI); when combined, they offer an intriguing insight into our future. The German artist Louisa Clement’s latest work Aporias (the name comes from the Ancient Greek term for an impasse or state of puzzlement) is a good example of this shared landscape. Clement collaborated with Acute Art to create a set of three virtual robots that use AI to talk to each other and the viewer, who is encouraged to converse freely with them. This ingenious trio of faceless mannequins has the ability to acquire language and knowledge, as well as tell lies. ‘My idea was to design a space that would be a border between the internet and reality,’ says Clement. ‘I wanted to create an experience that would be unique every time, because everyone has a different conversation with the bots. Some people had fun with it, others were confused.’
Such polarised reactions are par for the course for those working in this new, rapidly evolving sector, which elicits as much scepticism as it does enthusiasm – but so it has always been with art that pushes boundaries. The last word goes to Marina Abramovic, who has never let criticism stop her from sallying forth into the unknown. ‘My generation may think I’m crazy, but I believe that right now, we have more responsibility than ever to prepare for the future,’ she says. ‘Artists, in the end, are the oxygen of society.’