Judith Guez: Lab'Surd

Laval: The dawn of VR Art

May 11, 19h, Paris. Retour Laval Virtual. More info. Inscriptions.

ACM Siggraph France  and  Cap Digital,  in partnership with  Laval Virtual propose a "back from the show". On stage:  
– Judith Guez, Paris ACM Siggraph 
– Yves de Ponsay, Paris ACM Siggraph
– Stéphane Singier, Cap Digital 
– Jean-Baptiste Bini, Cap Digital 
– Yann Minh, noonaut, artist
– Laurent Chrétien, Laval Virtual

Our feelings after its visit in Laval this year

Let's say if frankly: VR as it is presently available is nor ready for traditional Arts of painting of sculpture. Its low resolution constrasts strongly with the 4K video images and pixels millions of photography and printing. And AR (Augmented Reality) has still little space to offer.

But VR and AR open ways to new concepts, new spaces, new spectators behaviors. As far as we know, Judith Guez and her fellows at Lab'Surd are at present the most advanced artist on these new domains. The central concept, which she presented at length in her PhD thesis, is the variable immersion depth. The work is not so new. It's first version was presented in Laval Virtual 2014 (on the Paris ACM Siggraph stand). The present version (see picture) has developed the concept into a complex space, where the visitor enters progressively, mastering the major object, a spheric light, from its physical implementation (on the table) to a purely virtual object in a fully virtual space (here inspired from Esscher, a good base of inspiration for non-standard spaces.

To be fully "artistic" (emotional, visually fascinating), the work still needs more developments, including a wider affordance, gameplay and user aids. That would demand investments beyond the reach of a small team in a universitary environment. But that could actually come in the months and years to come: boosted by the incrreasing success of its show, Laval Virtual plans a 5,5 million of euros by local authrorities.

At the global level, a larger range of concepts and tools will come from many sources. For instance:

Mathematicians Create Warped Worlds in Virtual Reality. Topology research in VR by Henry Segerman (Oklahoma State University in Stillwater) or Daan Michiels (University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign)

Using virtual reality to catch a real ball. Studies by Niemeyer (Disney Research lab) and Niemeyer and Matthew Pan (University of British Columbia).