What Makes a Virtual Reality Installation a Work of Art, Rather Than Just a Fun Immersive Experience? A Veteran Art Critic Makes Her Case

Earlier this month I wrote about a VR installation that opened up in a Madrid arts center, which places visitors in a highly detailed, to-scale recreation of a real forest. It was curated by Spanish art critic Cristina García-Lasuén, who calls it an example of "Portal Art", a new genre of fine art: "3D, VR, immersive, interactive, realistic, multi-sensory, of the world."

But what makes this VR installation art, as opposed to any other fun, immersive VR-based recreation of the natural world? García-Lasuén has been writing and working on the intersection between technology and high art for many years, so she's among the best people to explain the distinction. As she puts it:

“Exact recreations of reality are not always artistic. Actually, very few are artistic. Neither in the VR nor in real life. As an example, look at all the photographs or videos that are made in the world, those that we all take with smartphones, with cameras. Are they all artistic? Of course not. So, what makes some creations to be art and not some others?"

She has three criteria to elevate the virtual recreation to art:

“Broadly summarized, because the concept of a work of art is a fascinating and complex topic on which nobody is 100% agreed:

1: For a creation to be a work of art, it must be done by an art professional: an artist.

2: The objective must respond to very elaborate intellectual criteria and not merely aesthetic ones. The exclusively aesthetic, without previous intellectual development, is not art; it is 'something decorative'.

3: For conceptual art, as an essential priority, the work must be the result of a long reflexive process, in accordance with artistic, philosophical, literary and art history concepts. The concept that has inspired the reflexive work is the most important thing — much more than the final result or aesthetics.”

In this particular case, the forest installation was inspired by a famous passage by Thoreau, from Walden:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

So looking at this installation as a work of art -- and for that matter, thinking about other VR installations as works of art -- she says this, citing various artists and thinkers in her appraisal:  

“Artistically [this work] raises reflections on different topics, around the condition of narrative space and artistic time (J. Oteiza). It invites us to meditate on strength or weakness, questioning assumptions of perception and our security protocols: abandonment, fear, loneliness, helplessness, immensity.

“It questions the very definition of beauty: order, chaos, harmony, purity, attraction, union, the innate, the wild: Instinct vs. Reason (E. Kant).

“It shows the passage of time in its annual cycle: its relative valuation, essence, existence and entity, discovery, memory, history. Because this artwork is set out on the administrative border that separates two forest areas, it allows us to reflect on the border and the border conflicts, and the fragility or forcefulness of agreed-upon spaces: the sense of belonging and identity; public spaces, private and sacred…

[It] presents a new type of digital art — innovative, multi-sensory and active, and establishes a new relationship and protocol between artist, creation, and public exhibition space… 

“Finally, it invites to meditate on the concept of space and time, traditional, and poses the artistic creation of a new space-time.”

I generally agree with this, except perhaps for class/race barrier assumptions inherent in her "Art is what a professional artist makes" criteria. In any case, if VR is ever going to become a full-fledged medium in fine art, it will need to come with observations like this.

García-Lasuén's translated statement lightly edited by me.

Comments

[JohnC]

Oh good, at last someone who can define what Art is.
Hang on a minute.
1. For a creation to be a work of art, it must be done by an art professional: an artist.
I see, so if a naturally gifted creative person creates an amazing work of creativity that puts most so called professionals in the shade, at the age of say 10, before they have had a chance to enter any formal "training", then what they have produced cannot be seen as art.
Must be one of the most small minded definitions of art I have ever seen.
And for me that first line cancels out any need to read further. If you start any discourse with such dreadful limitations they must taint all that follows.

[Amanda Dallin]

Art is created by pretentious art critics.

[Samdon]

Art is whatever LL employees are unable to comprehend.

[JohnC]

2: The objective must respond to very elaborate intellectual criteria and not merely aesthetic ones. The exclusively aesthetic, without previous intellectual development, is not art; It is "something decorative".
Now here we have a problem, does the intellectual mind have any place at all in judging subjective creativity?
It seems to me that this statement is wholly the work of the intellectual mind attempting, as it always does, to take back control from the, what it perceives to be, lesser feeling emotional self.
But of course real art always arises from this far more primitive immediate self. Intellectual “art” is calculated and sterile, and always tainted by ego. Art is wholly subjective, and only subjected to any form of analysis in a world where money dictates the rules.

[AM Radio]

Having been formally trained, I understand the academic foundation of philosophical evolution desired in celebrated artists and their work. Digital however presents a new challenge.

I'd qualify on paper maybe. For digital experiential art, I disagree entirely. Digital genre, like the experiences it creates, is ephemeral, a reaction to the state of tech of the moment. There's a reason two things in this world describe their addicts as users. Drugs and online experiences will always maintain an underground super-relevance that the bourgeois may only be invited to and rarely on-time in the seedier underworld that would shame their neighbors and investors. Digital art relevance evaporates in weeks, artists log on elsewhere, waiting for you to catch up, like a digital Basquiat scrawling words on a wall and drifting away, or Banksy shredding his own work. Even the concept of dwell time so coveted by virtual world creators is itself the manipulation of a temporary situation for the user. Waiting for somone to study it and validate it misses the point entirely. The act of seeing truly relevant digital art is not as a viewer but as an active, focal participant where the participants define, narrate and ultimately eulogize the digital experience. The avant grade is dead tonight, and tomorrow it will be reborn and so again.

[TonyVT Skarredghost]

Point 3 is the only valid one: it must be something thought by the artist. With the other 2, I don't agree

[Cristina Garcia-Lasuen]

First of all, I thank Wagner (whom I respect and admire a lot, because he is a great professional), for the invitation to participate in such an interesting debate about the concept of art.

To talk about the artistic concept today is fundamental because we are in a change of Era, from the analogical we have passed in a few years to the Digital era one, and it is convenient to reflect on everything that is happening in the present and what it means to change for the future.

I appreciate having the opportunity to be in contact with thoughtful and profound people, as these comments demonstrate, agree with what I have said or not. They are all very interesting and also very respectful. Simply, I love being able to participate in this forum where I will surely learn new things and will open my mind to other options.

Sorry for my English, because my mother tongue is Spanish (I'm from Spain). I would feel more comfortable and successful in my language, but I know that you will know how to correct my expression errors.

In a few moments I'll answer (I have to run errands) See you soon!

[Better Then Cake]

It's as simple as JohnC & AM Radio both pointed out.

Also might i add in my own quick witty comment that's really simple
'Art is in the eye of the beholder.

[JohnC]

Thank you AM Radio, that is what I meant to say but lacked the ability to say it well :)
I am intensely aware that my creations in SL are fragile and transient. Even if they last any real length of time, the modern minds of those who observe them seem to register, comment and move on very fast. Part of the reason for this I imagine might be the ability to take screen shots, like selfies in RL, people sort of use it as a way of storing things for later. Capturing the bits they like, they then they feel safe that they have the memory stored, and can move on. SL has taught me not try to hold on too tight to my creations. But to enjoy them for the moment they exist, and then like the observer, move on, create something new. They are like the world they are created in, Virtual, not really there, like thoughts. It reminds me a lot of street art which is created in a day on the pavement and washed away by the first rain, or by the footsteps of passers by. It is no less a work of art for its transient nature. But those who judge art are only interested when it can be stored labeled and most essentially, priced.

[Clara Seller]

This is probably unrelated, but I don't care. It's an art conversation and it doesn't always matter what someone says because most of this conversation is better pulled out of the other end, anyway. When people ask me if their art is valuable, I usually throw the question right back to them. Most of the time it's not the best currency if it has no value to you. I happen to think children's art is incredibly valuable. You never know how many of these gifts you're going to get out of them in their lifetime before they are taught that they aren't very good or it's a job for someone else to do.