Sabrina Ratté : Reality-settings at Arsenal Contemporary Art

Reminder: Janet Echelman

 I have just been reminded of the wonderful work of Janet Echelman. I saw her talk a while back - cant remember if it was IRL or OL but it was great to hear about the work, which is all documented here

Synagogue which opens like a pop up book

Katrín Sigurdardóttir: High Plane V, Moma 2007

 I must put this up before I forget the artist's name again. I really love the mode of encounter for the work, with the visitor required to climb a ladder to find themselves in what appears to be a kind of frozen mountainous landscape. 

Shaping the Future of Architecture through VR technology

An interesting read in Dezeen - an article about the design group Space Popular and their ideas about how VR will shape the future of architecture. For example below is an image from the project The Venn Room.


The Venn Room: 

Just like a Venn diagram, this installation from the Tallinn Architecture Biennale 2019 suggests what might happen when virtual reality allows two or more physical worlds to combine.

It imagines that, when people in separate places communicate with one another through VR, a new environment will be created that is an average of their two homes.

"We were speculating that, over these years, these intersections become sentimental," said Hellberg. "So like grandpa's dresser and your IKEA table, and the way that they meet every single day, becomes meaningful."

"This will be a real life IKEA problem in 10 years. It will be a big deal," he added.

Space Popular's latest exhibition Freestyle, currently on show at the RIBA in London, charts the last 500 years of architectural history. Using VR, it explores how architectural style has always been shaped by changes in mass media, from the magazine to the video game.

With the arrival of VR, the pair suggest that architectural style is about to change more radically than ever before.

"We think that there's a shift coming in the next 20 years, where we will be able to draw a line in the history of media in architecture," added Hellberg.

"In the past, we were interacting with our body being removed. From now and onwards, the body is being brought into the medium, and the medium itself becomes architectural. This is why it is so urgent for us to be asking these questions."