Parallel Realities: Projecting Shadows Across the Virtual Reality Continuum
Alexander J Rollo
Through the interaction of the projected image with a landscape of clay sculptures, the following exegesis documents the creation of an augmented landscape which studies the effect of light, shadow, scale, and of ‘putting oneself’ (the observer participant) within the perspective. The work explores the development of a creative artwork that spans the virtual reality continuum with respect to the following conditions:
1) That a digitally rendered environment in a 3D program may provide a different insight than the physical environment but not necessarily a more heightened experience;
2) That a discourse can arise between an art work created in a physical environment and its recreation in a virtual environment which value adds to the experience of both environments.
The creative practice component of the research will comprise the development of a set of artefacts that attempts to address various phases of the continuum. The work will consist of two sculptures. The first piece will be a physical tangible form placed within the context of the real environment (RE). The second will be the recreation of this form as a digital piece, modelled using Autodesk Maya, and placed within the virtual environment (VR). Using an augmented environment (AE) to execute the blending of both artefacts, the two pieces will be coalesced and viewed by the observer/participant to form a combined entity on a two dimensional surface. This essentially yields a third artwork, which could only exist through the parallel presence of both the virtual and real environments. Both sculptures will have variable parameters able to be manipulated by the observer/participant. This not only informs and enhances the experience of all three environments, but implies that the experience of any one environment is dependent on the sum of the other two environments.
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