One of my interests is the relationship between the real world and the virtual world. If the virtual can inspire and inform the real, we go beyond technological isolation.
Curating an art exhibition is just such an opportunity. In the physical domain, curating is labor-intensive, resulting in significant overhead in placement decisions. On the other hand, virtual simulations can be very fast and efficient, supporting flexible results.
Actually, my job is a photographer. Photographers are generally not involved in exhibition planning. We basically record what is now, not what is yet to come. But is there a practical way to quickly create a virtual gallery using photos of artwork and curate exhibitions that would exist in the real world?
When Rafael Perea de La Cabada approached me to take archival quality photographs of his work ahead of an upcoming exhibition, our conversation turned to the challenge of curating a show for him. He wanted to explore different ideas, but felt physically constrained moving his work from his studio to distant exhibition venues and to various trial-and-error locations in the gallery. I proposed the creation of a virtual environment to quickly create a virtual tourable space where he could quickly and creatively curate his show. The application to do this was OpenSim.
In OpenSim, you can quickly grow and resize simple boxes to create a floor, wall, picture frame, or 'canvas' on which to apply a JPEG photographic image of your artwork. Photographic images of sculptures can be preserved by post-processing them to create transparency around the art and saving them in PNG format (sculptural art photographed against a solid or black background is very easy to separate from the background).
Lights can also be used to simulate general lighting. Build time will vary depending on the size of your exhibition, but you can create a virtual gallery with all the necessary details in a matter of hours and start curating your show as soon as images of your work are uploaded.
Perea had previously contracted me to photograph his work using archival protocols. This meant high-resolution capture, uniform, uniform lighting with suppressed ambient light pollution, and the inclusion of capture with color charts for setting white balance in post-production. This is an ideal image for all purposes, but your virtual gallery can also be filled with basic, clean cell phone photos. Ultimately, virtual galleries were created to facilitate show curation, not to create a final presentation.
Note: Depending on the number of images in your work and their native resolution, we may be able to handle file transfers via email, but if not, a free Dropbox account will have enough capacity to handle all transfers.
Virtual curating requires photos of all artwork to be documented with actual measurements. Because virtual galleries and content will be built at scale, which is actually easier than you think. Artists usually already know the scale of their work. When I prepared the work image, I included the size in the file name of the work image. This maintained a size that was inherently associated with each piece. The size of the artwork was provided to me in inches. The OpenSim viewer performed the transformation because it used metrics.
To build a gallery, you first need to obtain reference materials. For the Perea project, I knew the gallery would be the Ann Foxworthy Gallery at Allan Hancock College. A Google search yielded numerous images, and the gallery director also provided digital images and overall dimensions.
This gallery has a variety of wall angles, but just like the artwork, we created the gallery to size so that all components fit easily. I also added some optional details (e.g. track lighting). The ceiling is best if it is a single object (connected to multiple objects if necessary) that can be moved sideways to provide easy placement access to the artwork.
Of course, working in a virtual 3D environment requires a learning curve, which puts many people, including artists, away from using software like OpenSim. But of all the 3D tools I've used, including Maya, Modo, SketchUp, ZBrush, and 3D Studio, OpenSim is the fastest and most user-friendly.
The compromise is maximum visual quality. Advanced applications such as Maya are used for film-quality CGI. OpenSim itself cannot achieve that level of visual realism.
But our goal was to curate a virtual art exhibition that could only be seen by the artist and a small number of people. For these kinds of projects, OpenSim covers the cost, as you can see in the sample image below.
For the Perea exhibition, he had a preliminary idea of how the artwork would be arranged. A virtual gallery was set up, photos of his work were uploaded and attached to a 'canvas' appropriate to the size of each piece, and then each work was moved to its initially proposed location on the wall. Then we can try different ideas. The process was so fast that I was often able to talk on the phone while making changes and emailing screenshots.
Alternatively, Perea could have run his OpenSim viewer to see the changes I made or make the changes himself. There's a lot of flexibility here, but in this case he wanted to focus more on direction and executing control.
Perea has stated several times that this process has been a huge relief.
To add completeness to your virtual project, you can export a 360-degree panoramic view to create a virtual tour. Recent Firestorm and Second Life viewers have 360-degree snapshot features.
Nine key positions were effective in providing a walk-through experience. The 360-degree panoramic view was also useful for sharing and collaborating with other stakeholders, such as gallery directors. And to bring it back to the realm of the physical world, a 360-degree virtual tour was created using on-site photos. This preserves the exhibition immersively and permanently.
The tour was created using 3DVista, a commercial application for creating virtual tours.
Curating an art exhibition requires careful planning. Although much of the process is conceptual, installing an actual work of art requires considerable physical work. Using a 3D environment like OpenSim gives gallery directors, curators, or artists the opportunity to immersively previsualize exhibitions at scale and relatively quickly. Curating options can then be explored very effectively before labor-intensive and inherently permanent installation decisions are implemented.
Connect to a 360-degree OpenSim virtual tour. Click on the art to open the info panel.
Connect to a 360-degree photo virtual tour. Click on the art again to open the information panel.