University of West London
Wow, what a riot of images and information. I am not sure what else to say... rock and roll! I am not sure what they were trying to achieve, but it is very hard to browse or concentrate on anything. To be fair though, it is for an advertising and PR, so probably not designed by a creative person. It was created in Artsteps.com online app.
North East Scotland College
Better than West London and made in the same artsteps software. Nicely designed and they have made a better use of scale for impact, but it is still very crowded. This small college from Scotland easily beats most University VR exhibitions. A very minor point - the walls are a bit thin.
Brunel University London
They have taken social interaction as the starting point for their VR exhibition. You are given an avatar and you explore the gallery amongst other avatars... the idea being that you can interact and chat with them. Great for the private view. However, I spent most of my time hiding from the other avatars as I was petrified they were going to speak to me! One downside is access to it. you have to click about six or seven links before you can get into it.
Liverpool School of Art and Design, LJMU
I like the ambition of this 'experience', but it is very glitchy and takes up to five minutes to get through to any work... It starts with an animated landing on Mars, after which, icons representing different students appear in the sky. You are meant to navigate through and click on the icons to view the artworks, which it does through a 360 degree photographic tour of the installations in a shopping centre, utilising Matterport (similar to Kuula.co). Mad, but maddening! They should have chosen Matterport and not bothered with the animation and 3D stuff.
Northumbria University
I like this exhibition. It is a tongue-in-cheek 2D version of everything we have seen above. It makes you question why we feel the need to create a very complex virtual exhibition as they have managed to create an easy to navigate and fun showcase utilising what looks like the plans for their now-cancelled grad show.
I have a couple issues with what I have seen. The big one for me is, why has all the work been installed so close together? Virtual space is infinite and scaleable, so there is no excuse. Just think how much more sophisticated North East Scotland College's exhibition would be if they gave everyone just a little bit more space. Also, you don't need portraits of the artists next to their work. The only people who are going to appreciate that are their parents.
The second big issue is download speed. The network speeds in your area may be very different from mine, so one has to design with the lowest common denominator in mind, LJMU. Also, navigation and ease of use can really impede the viewing experience. Every click of the mouse is the equivalent of a set of doors or flight of stairs in a real gallery and if you've gone through four doors and climbed three flights of stairs, then the work better be worth the effort. The experience must not overshadow the artworks!
Finally, an observation of traditional websites. The web page based grad showcases are way too daunting to attempt to navigate. They are either based around a great long list of student names or pages full of competing artworks. They may be cleverly and beautifully designed, but they can be very overwhelming. A final point here is how much better a nicely built 3D virtual gallery allows you to browse and navigate diverse (quality and theme) artworks... certainly compared with some of the webpages I have seen.
For comparison. This is a screenshot of Tubes 3D gallery, a commercial magazine based space. The artworks are shown at original size.
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.
