Virtual Reality Installation, Inject Print, and Painted 3D prints
Untitled(Disappearing) is the project with a combination of Virtual Reality(VR), digital prints, and painted 3D prints. By weaving the 2D and 3D spaces together subtly in different constructions in this project, I question the binary perception between 2D and 3D, and use the transformation between different spaces as a standpoint in rethinking the cultural memory construction in my hometown, with the rapid changes in recent years because of the gentrification policy. This project is also in a conversation to the historic fire happened in his hometown in 1938 because of the Scorched Earth Policy that burned down the whole city. Through reconnecting current urban development and huge fire initiated by the government in 1938 through a similar gesture in resurfacing the physical space, I reimagine the transformation of urban space. This project uses VR and 3D print technology as a form in speculating the memory construction in the new digital age by looking at the urban changes in the past and at present in my hometown.
Digital Prints (8*12inch for each)
Untitled(Disappearing) starts from the photographs taken in a district in my hometown, named Chaozong District, in which many buildings will be taken down for constructing a “historic and cultural district”. I use green oil paint and x-knife to change the form of the printed photographs. After the physical transformations, I scan these physical manipulated prints and use Photoshop to alter the color green and overlaps with archive images of my hometown taken before the fire happened in 1938 digitally. I print the digital manipulated prints again and repeat the previous steps. These prints with the amalgamation of past and present, digital and analog, become the anchor of the whole project.
This VR experience is constructed with the digital prints I made. Audiences can wear VR Headset and walk in a room-scale VR space. In this VR space, objects are vanishing and becoming absence slowly. This subtle transformation in VR space is connected to an HD projector and projected on a semi-transparent screen made of rice paper. Since the audience who wears VR headset walks in front of a semi-transparent screen, the audience’s shadow will be part of the large projection. The audience who is experiencing in VR not only shapes the content of the large projection, their body also becomes part of it.
Inject Print (40inch * 78inch)
This digital print combines all the prints in the progress of making and the digital prints captured from the VR space. Echoing the immersiveness of VR experience, this new digital print re-flattens the virtual dimensional space.
Inject Print (40inch * 78inch)
3D prints, Oil Paint (Dimension Various)
I used the photographs taken in Chaozong District and aligned them together into several virtual 3D models by using photogrammetry technology. After printing these 3D models, I treated them as a canvas and painted over it. These physical objects exist between the 2D and 3D, connect the virtual and physical, and question the binary perception of different spaces.
Click the Image or go to the website: www.haoranchang.com/untitleddisappearingweb to explore this VR project through web browser
Untitled(Disappearing) was designed as a Virtual Reality project that audience can walk in the virtual rendering. However, because of the pandemic, my show has been canceled and it cannot be available to people anymore. Although VR is digital and can be distributed very easily, it is not widely accessible nowadays. VR artworks are still heavily relied on the physical infrastructure. Therefore, I recompile my VR project into a web browser version that audience can walk around in the VR space. Also, tailoring the characteristics of 2D space, I add a new function of field of view which enables audience to see the project through the lens of different point of views. This new compiled project intends to cope with the difficulty of pandemic season in a creative way. It tries to open another door in creativity during the crisis. I try to think about how the creativity can continue even if some many things have been stopped suddenly.