Rosie Flo's Colouring Art Gallery

For Christmas I was given Rosie Flo's Colouring Art Gallery as a present. It is a self assembled cardboard gallery. A bit of fun. However, it did get me thinking about how we plan for exhibitions, past and present and how VR relates to it.

I have used models of a gallery in the past to plan, in a fairly detailed way, how artworks will be displayed. These days, I have a much less formal approach. I will have a good idea where one or two key pieces will be sited, but I like the flexibility of being able to leave it until the beginning of the installation to work out where the rest of the works should go. Maybe VR will enable me to plan, in a more concrete way, in advance of an exhibition... it would certainly save time during installation as most of the time is spent placing the work

To come to some sort of conclusive ideas on the subject, I thought I would do a quick comparative analysis between the/a cardboard model of a gallery and a VR gallery as a planning tool. I will look at scale (as in the accurate size of the things rather than a comparison of scale), art placement and position, proportion, usability and pre-visualisation.

A cardboard model can provide a good sense of architectural scale if the gallery measurements are down-scaled accurately (i.e. 2cm = 1m and 1cm = 50cm). All the walls need to be cut to size and the images scaled down (accurately!), printed (assuming they have been photographed first) and cut out. These can be time consuming tasks, especially if the gallery has many hanging surfaces and there are lots of artworks. It can also become quite fiddly if there are a lot of small works that would potentially be printed at a tiny size. However, this is all pointless if there is nothing to illustrate the scale in real life, so one has to include scale models of people as something to relate to.



A VR gallery can also provide a good sense of architectural scale as long as the original gallery measurements are accurate. In UE4, one can convert sizes directly (i.e. 1point = 1m and 0.01 = 1cm) which is quicker than having to use a calculator for every wall, floor and doorway. Assuming that the artworks have been photographed, all images can be easily imported and sized just as simply. There is no cutting out, but there is some calculations involved in working out the height and width ratios so the artwork does not look squashed or stretched, but it is undoubtedly quicker than the model. A VR gallery does not need life sized models of people to illustrate scale because the VR experience happens at normal scale. The Oculus user is well able to perceive scale as they move through the gallery.

Both the model and VR allow one to workout art placement and spacing equally well (as long as everything is scaled accurately). A cardboard model can be fiddly, if the original artworks are small and one is never going to position works accurately and level, but it does do the job. However, VR is going to have the advantage of allowing the curator to walk through a potential set-up. If one was to try both approaches to work out the size and proportion of an artwork, then the model is going to be much more time consuming as multiple prints will be needed to be produced and cut out. It is very simple to resize images in UE4. Again, VR is going to be more useful as the impact on the viewer can by directly perceived.

Up to the point of being able to walk through a potential layout, both approaches are usable, but VR is going to make life a lot easier, because everything, from resizing to moving placements can be very simply achieved in UE4 and the effects easily measured with the Oculus headset. The plus for a cardboard model, is that almost anyone can cut and tape a representation of a gallery together. Not everyone will have the inclination or time to learn to use a 3D design programme (UE4 in my case) to create a model of a gallery!

A cardboard model does a fairly good job for pre-visualising an exhibition, especially if it is photographed from the scaled position of a visitor, but one is unable to experience the impact of the overall exhibition (on the eventual visitor) in the direct way that VR does so well.

At the end of the day, I will never completely rely on a pre-visualised model to plan an exhibition, as I like the freedom to change things around before installing (if need be). Having said that, I know my gallery well, but pre-visualisation could be a great tool for planning exhibitions in spaces I have not used before (but I will still hang on to flexibility on installation day).

If you are reading this blog and feel you can add something to my research then please comment… even if you are correcting me or don’t agree with something that I say.