For those who know what this is, feel free to skip ahead… I’m still hoping to broaden my audience, but for now that remains a group comprising of my dad, my friend Carey, and a few students whose comments I responded to after my presentation, a tad over-enthusiastically. And of this group, I’d be surprised if anyone has logged in more than the one time I sent them the link, if that. But in the spirit of lofty ambition, I will write as though addressing everyone in my vast, albeit fictitious network of like-minded VR art enthusiasts.
Colloquium is the name given to what my school, OCADU (Ontario College of Art and Design… University) hosts annually in September for its cohorts of grad students. It involves a somewhat rigorous but worthwhile exercise of presenting then responding to questions about our thesis research. I sat in on last year’s round for my own cohort (my program is called Digital Futures) with the fresh eyes of a first-year grad student newly entering the stream. I found it in equal parts inspiring and intimidating. It seemed these second-year students had managed to pull together an awful lot of research acumen (read: they really seemed to know what they were doing), while the questions posed mostly by faculty went right over my head. While the latter might remain the case had I the chance to repeat that scenario of being a fly-on-the-wall member of the audience, I’m at least no longer intimidated by academic jargon. In that respect I find I tend to try to speak plainly, though I do wrestle with the desire to be more prolific as I continue the ongoing plight to find my academic legs.
Last year’s Colloquium took place in the brightly lit, high-ceilinged, spacious loft that is characteristic of the design firms and start-ups renovated into the old industrial buildings that sprinkle the makeup of Toronto’s downtown core, the very same space till up till mid-March of 2020, we had called home. This was the Digital Futures Studio space, where our central classes took place, where we worked on group projects, studied, played, and napped, the pandemic hit that has affected each of us the most directly. Losing this space (but not, unfortunately, the collective fee in our tuition that contributes towards the building lease and operations) has meant we’ve lost our community in most ways. I think for the most part we try not to think about it, and consider ourselves at least lucky to have had 4.5 months to forge a foundation together in there while we had it. It was just long enough for us to be able to comfortably dart jokes and memes across our various messaging platforms or be able reach out for assistance when needed.
This September, as most events worldwide have done once IT systems had been set up, the Colloquium went virtual. We presented from our homes, something we’re accustomed to doing by now, but with an added twist. Instead of the usual format of presenting to our own graduate program, we were consolidated into a two-day blitz of all the grad programs at the school. This meant our time-cap was the presiding factor – we were each allotted a hard ten minutes to disclose our research to date and intentions going forward. It was then followed by another hard-lined ten minutes for questioning in a novel, and I’m assuming somewhat Zoom fatigue-friendly, format wherein we were placed in groups categorized by keywords we provided beforehand, that spanned across all grad programs. Had I not been inclined to submit to the passive ennui of pandemic curve balls, I might’ve chosen my keywords more carefully, as my somewhat Ted Talk-style presentation warning of the dangers of big tech on creative space got nestled among richly textured introspections about the nature of collage. I felt my own diatribe pale self-consciously in its performance-driven gusto compared to the theory-backed studies of my group’s counterparts, and the line of questioning catered to the other presenters as a result.
Regardless, it still went well, in spite of enduring a dull panic attack the evening previous and forcing one of my professors to help me synthesize my scrambled sea of Power Point slides into a coherent narrative while he was driving home at 10 pm. In all honesty the hard work of assembling my research had pitted me down a rabbit hole. In my attempt to respond to the bullet point of how I would “intervene” in the given field, I might’ve taken the term a bit too literally and deciphered it in the comic book sense (how will I – good guy – intervene with threat of corporations – bad guy). And from that vantage point, the looming hand of big tech was permeating around every corner. I had spent the last several months deeply invested in the creative potential of virtual reality, an activity that necessitates turning a deliberate blind eye to suspicious goings-on behind the scenes, in order to foster an innocent, child-like wonder. It was inevitable that when it came time to thrust my meanderings about a still-largely speculated field into a public (and okay, intimidating) arena, I would have no choice but to face up to the threat of Big Tech.
The professor in question fanned the fire in the sense that when I addressed these concerns to him, he seemed to respond, “welcome to big show!” and in that aerosol-filled rabbit hole, handed me a match. Unfortunately this was all taking place at the 11th hour (and more literally, at 2 or 3 am before a 10:30 am presentation slot). The presentation even got its subtitle from this conversation, a direct quote from my professor in describing the exploit of creative talent for corporate means: “the canary in the goldmine”. The result was that I threw my own curveball into the mix by preparing my presentation about art in virtual reality around the theme of corporate control. Whoops.
It’s not to say this is irrelevant to my research, far from it. It’s more like after spending four months dancing around in a field, I fell into a muddy pothole the night before then called my choreographed performance “Beware of hole.” In other words, fields have potholes just as artists have their own dangers to recon with. It’s part of the picture and by all means worth calling attention to, but it’s not the sum of its parts. I started coming to terms with this a day later, when fervently summarizing my suspicious findings to my dad, a career programmer, writer and musician, while his humanitarian-valued wife cheered me on. With a vapid expression he just shrugged and looked off as though distracted by something out the window, perhaps a falling leaf. It wasn’t so much the look of “Tell me something I don’t know”, as “Oh, this channel again?”. At first I tried to write this off in my head as the bored cynicism of age (and to my dad when you read this- come on, like you don’t play that up). But when in a feedback session with my advisor, that shrug was articulated into well-phrased reasoning that echoed the same blend of understanding and self-aware dissonance, my pointed finger at that rabbit hole finally relaxed and fell to my side. With a bit of jump in my still stumbling legs, I turned my gaze back out to the field of rabbits.
Now, without further ado…
The link below is the video of my Colloquium presentation. Following that: each slide of my presentation, with the corresponding excerpt of script.
My art practice has often been led by a fascination with technical creative tools, along with a watchful eye on the corporations that own those tools. I grew up watching my dad, a programmer for IBM, take computers apart and put them back together as he saw fit. As an artist my interest lies in less what’s under the hood of the technology at hand than how it was designed and the intentions behind it. I want to know who put it in my hands and why.
It’s what led me to apply to the Digital Futures program, and that came as no surprise to anyone I knew.
I’ve been intending to focus my thesis research on art in virtual reality for over a year now. I’ve since discovered not only a booming market of creativity apps for VR, but an exciting, passionate community of artists. They’re a hive of activity, pushing the boundaries of what’s creatively possible. They’re engaged in a constant exchange of ideas about exploring the new frontier and improving on techniques. I started to realize that this could potentially be the early days of a groundbreaking art movement.
But I’m concerned. Everything from the VR headsets they (and now I) wear to the apps used to make the work is owned by big tech companies. Facebook owns Oculus Quest, the first stand-alone VR headset, and has recently announced the launch of Quest II as being better, faster and cheaper, targeted directly at mainstream audiences.
It led me to consider the twisted irony : a revolutionary art movement created and supported by the tools of corporations that literally feed off our data. Are the tech companies handing us VR as a communication tool, but gentrifying it before it we have a chance to explore its creative potential? And are the VR artists that ARE exploring it, are they being exploited in order to pave the way?
I’d like to provide a bit of context about my work as an artist. To kick things off, here’s a snippet from an animation short I made in university. The message was about seeking a creative spark in the darkness and the power of new ideas when they come together. Ultimately though, it’s a warning about the corporate greed that always seems to sniff out these ideas and gobble them up (those are supposed to be US presidents, by the way).
I’ve always been a sketch artist, a style of drawing that’s inspired from daily life experiences as they take place. I learned to draw by observing the world of people around me with fast strokes of a ballpoint pen.
I got into digital art through years of trial and error, a process that grew from learning and sharing with a like-minded community. I worked as demo artist Wacom, the company that makes drawing tablets. I gave gave demonstrations at events like comic-con, taught courses to beginners, created online tutorials and competed in worldwide painting competitions. I was an active member in a community flourishing with artists, learning together to transfer our painting and drawing skills to digital formats.
When I got into UX design, I led a team in building mobile apps for the Royal Conservatory of music. We designed eight apps, each focused on learning music theory. My concern at all moments was the kid on the other end, practicing piano with an iPad on the music stand.
In my private practice I’ve been working on this political comic project. It’s a mock children’s story with a satirical and rather morbid plot about the polar divide in the United States. Ultimately it’s a message about the importance of community and the power of supporting one another.
My interests started turning towards virtual reality, immediately captivated by the creative potential as well as the threat of corporate control. In the Digital Theory course last semester, I wrote a paper about the need for autonomy in VR applications, arguing that a creative education in the form of drawing skills could help foster a sense of cultural independence in navigating the virtual space. In other words, instead of waiting for Facebook and Google to spoon-feed it to us, we could be designing the environments of virtual reality ourselves.
I was writing this paper in the early days of the pandemic, and saw first hand the sudden surge of VR acquisitions in tech giants. Facebook Connect, the sector focused on VR, is a fairly blatant announcement of total VR world domination. The clouds and and meditation music reminded me of the sci-fi movie Vanilla Sky.
My prediction: it’s going to happen faster than we think, and it’s going to be fitness and education that get VR into the mainstream. Already there’s a surprisingly big industry behind both, with heart-tracking, bat-bashing, beat-dancing to the tunes of your day and led by workout celebrity coaches who cheer you on and ‘train’ you through your progress.
This is the education section of the Oculus store. You can now scuba dive with sea snakes, swimming alongside them while an audio tour guide recounts their history.
When I got the Oculus Quest for my thesis work, I hadn’t anticipated the extent that it would become my companion through self-isolation. I keep telling people it’s the solution to a pandemic winter. I was getting dangerously addicted to a game called Beat Saber. It’s so fun you don’t even notice the insanely sweaty work out.
Goro Fujita is the art director at Facebook Connect. He makes tutorials for Quill, the Oculus-owned painting and animation app. His charisma and excitement are contagious, while making the program appear easy to learn.
AR-VR Women and Allies is a community hub that encourages newcomers into the space and so far has lived up to the name. When I joined their facebook group, someone immediately welcomed me and invited me to introduce myself to their community of industry leaders and academics.
Sabbi is an independent artist and a self-proclaimed community leader in the VR Art space. Rightfully so. She hosts a community forum, curates virtual events, art battles, and long term challenges that create momentum and endless engagement within the community.
Sabbi also produces a lot of tutorial content. In this example, the images on the left are my initial attempts to map out the virtual space in Tilt Brush. I used my own proportions as unit of measurement, whereas Sabbi pointed out how to measure the space itself, with math. It was like the evolution of astronomy, having to learn that the VR world didn’t actually revolve around me.
Wesley Allsbrook is a renowned editorial illustrator and the art director who created the incredible works for the VR film Dear Angelica.
Soon after wrapping that film project, Allsbrook had a solo show of works of art that reflected elements of a scene she created in VR. Every piece was for sale, making a point that it might be illegal according to Facebook’s licensing agreement. Anything created with their tools can’t be owned by the creators.
I started working on this blog throughout the summer. It serves as a grab-bag for everything that relates to my research, from reviews about the hardware and apps to stream-of-thought reflections and musings, to technical documentation about the production process. It’s my intention to immerse myself into the VR art community, and this blog will be my hub. As I begin to network with other artists in the community I’ll invite them into this space to read and comment.
Along with the blog, I’ve started posting my process videos on a YouTube channel. In this recent post I’ve included a video, in which I talk through my first attempt at creating an environment in Tilt Brush. As it was an experimental project, I won’t get into the details, but it was a fascinating journey in attempting to recreate a Japanese woodblock print into a ‘life-size’ virtual space you can walk around in.
I wanted to create work that drew attention to the escape factor when working in virtual space. There was something not sitting right with me about living through unprecedented times yet as an artist, being too preoccupied to make work that reflected the poignancy of the moment we’re living through. It was through all the escaping I was doing in playing VR games that made me realize this is exactly what is expected of us as a society. So instead, I’m going to use virtual reality as a means of inviting a discourse about the actual reality we’re living in.
To give some context: At the height of the recession in 2008, I lost all of my illustration contracts and had to get a quick-fix temp job in an insurance agency. My daily commute was an hour and a half, and I kept myself sane by sketching on the subway. I drew what I saw, often taken from mental snapshots throughout the day. I was miserable in the vocation but as an artist, it remains the most meaningful work I’ve ever made. I embellished the scenes, interpreting them my own way, and when they were completed, I would post them to a Flickr album and write a story for each one. Every two weeks I would “publish” an instalment, by way of posting the album link to random places like Craigslist marketplace or an obscure forum and see what came back. It generated a steady following, often with comments from the most surprising people. I called this art journalism, and it’s the work I would like to get back to doing.
My commitment going forward is to create one scene in VR a week, each scene an interpretation of something reflecting the days we are living in. This is my intervention: drawing a bridge between the real and the virtual. I will immerse myself into the community of VR Artists, exposing my work as well as my video process and blog writing. I will encourage discourse about the subject matter; not just the winter days of the pandemic but the greater agenda of whom or what is behind the tools we are using to create.