ART, 3D, CURATING, VIRTUAL TOUR
VIRTUAL CURATING FREES ARTIST
Curating an art exhibition
is an exacting job. In the physical realm, it's also labor
intensive, so decisions on placement carry considerable
overhead. Photographers typically aren't involved in the
planning of an exhibition. We basically record what is, not
what's yet to come. But is there a practical way to use
photography of the artwork to rapidly create a virtual gallery
and curate an immersive exhibition very close to the physical
reality?
Enter the virtual
environment
When Rafael Perea de La Cabada came to me for archival quality
photography of his art in advance of an upcoming exhibition, our
conversation also turned to the challenges for him to curate the
show. He wanted to explore various ideas but was feeling captive
to the physicality of moving artwork from his studio to the
distant exhibition location. I proposed a virtual environment
application that allows very rapid creation of places that one
can walk through, virtually, or export to 360º panoramas for
immersive viewing. The application is OpenSimulator, often
referred to as OpenSim.
For instance, rather than building shapes from scratch, a number
of primitives, called prims, are available in common useful
shapes, such as a box. A box can be stretched and resized to
make a floor, wall, picture frame or a 'canvas' on which to
apply the photographic image of an artwork. Lights are also
available to simulate general illumination. Build times vary
with the size of an exhibition, but a virtual gallery can be
created in a handful hours, and curating the show can begin
immediately as artwork images are uploaded.
Photography from day one
When Perea approached me, the need was clear: photograph his
artwork with archival protocols. This meant high-resolution
captures, flat, even lighting with suppression of ambient light
contamination, and the inclusion of captures that included a
color chart for setting white balance in post-production.
Done this way, these are also excellent images for making an
effective virtual gallery for curating a show in advance of an
on-site real-world installation.
To make virtual curating work, every artwork photo needs to be
documented with exact real-world measurements. This is because
the virtual gallery will be built to scale. I like to put those
dimensions into the filename, which keeps them intrinsically
associated with each artwork. The artwork sizes were provided to
me with the dimensions as inches. JPEG files are ideal for
virtual gallery work.
Building the gallery
To build any gallery, it's first necessary to acquire some
reference material. For the Perea project, I knew the gallery
would be the Ann Foxworthy Gallery at Allan Hancock College.
Google searching produced a number of images, and the gallery
director also supplied digital images and overall dimensions.
There's a learning curve to working in a virtual 3D environment.
Yet of all the 3D tools I've used, including Maya, Modo,
SketchUp, ZBrush and 3D Studio, OpenSim is by far (by far!) the
fastest and most user friendly. The trade-off is ultimate visual
quality. High-end applications like Maya are used for cinema
quality CGI. OpenSim is not, by itself, capable of that level of
visual realism. But our purpose was to curate an art exhibition
virtually, which only we and a handful of other people would
see, and for that kind of project, OpenSim fills the bill, as
you can see below in sample images (OpenSim top, Ann Foxworthy
Gallery photography bottom)...
Curating
For the Perea exhibition, he had a preliminary set of ideas as
to how the art would be arranged. Once the virtual gallery was
assembled, and the photos of his artwork were uploaded and
attached to prims sized according to the dimensions of each
piece, I moved each artwork into the initially proposed
locations on the walls. This process was so fast, we could often
sit on the phone while I made the changes and forwarded
screenshots via email.
Perea commented more than once that this process was a great
relief. Because the environment was 3D, the camera viewpoint
could be placed anywhere. The art was imported at 2K quality
while the export of 360º panoramic views were at 8K, making it
possible to create a quality virtual tour. Nine key positions
were effective in providing a walk-through experience. The 360º
panoramic views were also valuable for sharing and collaborating
with other stakeholders, such as the gallery director.
Final Thoughts
Curating an art exhibition takes careful planning. Much of that
process is conceptual, but the actual installation of art
requires considerable physical work.
Using a 3D environment that facilitates very rapid construction
and a "realistic enough" display presents the opportunity for a
gallery director, curator, or the artist, to previsualize an
exhibition immersively, at scale. This then makes possible the
highly effective exploration of options, before relatively
permanent installation decisions are implemented.