I founded Chameleon Gallery, focusing on virtual reality art, at the end of 2017. I will present two projects here: Mooore Mall 1.0, a live VR performance, and Chameleon Gallery SteamVR. More projects under Chameleon Gallery can be found: www.chameleongallery.net.
Mooore Mall 1.0 is a site specific VR performance which speculates the surreality of virtual economics by creating a quasi-futuristic commercial store both on site and in VRChat. The trio of installation artist, performer, and VR artist work together to create an installation selling nonfunctional products based on the format of stores in e-commerce site, Taobao. The virtual and physical stores will coexist in installation and VRChat, overlapping fact and fiction. By alienating the familiarity of e-commerce stores in everyday life and donning asian quasi-futuristic aesthetics, Mooore Mall 1.0 asks critical questions about labor, capital, and the technology of Sinofuturism. Exploring the concept of Sinofuturism based on the online economic system in China, Mooore Mall 1.0 reflects the disappearance of truthfulness in society, as the proliferation of commercial culture, and the trending gamification of everything in the virtual space, rises to dominance.
In the center of this “store”, performer performs on the stage with improvised, unpolished, and slightly exaggerated movements. Her unprofessional movements subvert the familiarity, revealing the uncanniness of everyday life experience. The performer also wears a VR headset and trackers while she performs on the central stage. Her movements will be captured by the base sensors and simulated in virtual space. All the simulation data will be reflected in an avatar in VRChat. The performance on the stage in physical space is completely re-contextualized in the game, so that audiences and players look at different versions of the same person: the real performer versus the avatar performer. However, these two contexts and appearances converge together at the moment of the performance. She is the performer in the physical space and she is the player in the game. With the mediation of VR, the performance becomes a game.
This is a store, yet, this is also a game.
Performance: Ni Xin
Physical Installation: He Nandan
VR development and design: Haoran Chang
Chameleon Gallery SteamVR is the virtual platform published on SteamVR to show VR artworks from emerging artists in collaboration with Chameleon Gallery. Audience can use HTC Vive or Valve index to experience artworks for free. This video is a walkthrough of the first volume.
The first volume features three exhibitions: Voiding the Void by Ana Knezevic, Warehouse Project , and Medusa by Sara Tirelli.
Voiding the Void: Voiding the Void is an HTC Vive VR installation. Viewers pass through virtual spaces in the installation, exploring shapes and sounds from afar and within. This movement triggers subtle shifts that offer the viewer new relationships to the virtual space they are in and the world they return to. Within the installation, there are five different virtual spaces with unique environments consisting of shapes, sounds, and light. To travel between the virtual spaces, you must navigate to the center of the space you are in. Once you reach the center of the symmetrical space, you will automatically pass through to the next room.
Warehouse Project: Warehouse is a collaborative project between emerging artists and Chameleon Gallery. By working with artists who use different media in their practices, Warehouse experiments with virtual reality in various formats. The first volume will feature Sunset in Baltimore by Sicheng Wang, President Xi reads Chinese dictionary by Chuxi Guo, Dreamland by Wenkai Li and Road Towards BanZhangShan Tunnel by Nandan He.
Medusa: Medusa is a 360-degree video work that is experienced with a virtual-reality headset. It describes a Europe in crisis, and the events in the film mix fact with fiction. Sara Tirelli has used current news, social media, EU documents and interviews to portray the identity of the EU and the prevailing situation for people seeking asylum. The title of the work refers to the Greek myth about the gorgon Medusa, whose gaze turned people into stone. It also suggests the historic painting by Théodore Géricault, The Raft of the Medusa (1818-1819), which is a depiction of the survivors of a shipwreck and how people are the victims of poor decisions made by the rulers. The Raft of the Medusa, in turn, has similarities with contemporary images of refugees who risk their lives on the way to Europe, while people in Europe are paralysed watching the events unfold on their TV screens. There is an obvious link between the painting and today’s media images of the refugee situation.
Project curated and led by Haoran Chang