Oh, Canada: Home to great government-sponsored healthcare, and now, noteworthy metaverse art.
Click here to teleport to Immersivist, the Second Life sim of longtime metaverse artist Bryn Oh, whose new experience, "Lobby Cam", is brought to us by the Canada Council for the Arts. (Watch the mixed reality trailer above.)
"When applying for a Canada Council for the Arts grant you are competing with a wide range of artists across the country trying to convince jurors that your proposal is important to support," Bryn tells me, explaining how she got the grant. "In this case I wrote why virtual art is unique and important right now and would send them the script, art samples from the current work but also from previous grant works from the Ontario Arts Council. They look at your budget, support material and so forth. Then it takes four months to find out if you get it as they go through all the applications."
So take that all as a tip for other artists who want to work on metaverse platforms.
As for the inspiration for "Lobby Cam":
"All my work starting from 2009 is one long story with each new artwork being a chapter in that story. Having said that the story itself is a type of diary where I take parts of my life and incorporate them into my narrative. 'Lobby Cam' takes place 110 years before the last work called the 'Brittle Epoch' and it was inspired from a variety of things:
"How we adapt to new technologies looking through lenses of etiquette that, in some cases, have grown obsolete.
"In addition I am also looking at myself through the pandemic. In 'Lobby Cam' the main character is isolated and alone living in a converted grain silo. He feels content in his solitude only to discover he is actually quite lonely.
"For me, and this is embarrassing to admit, but over the pandemic I let friendships fade and my world shrank down to waking up, petting my cats then going into the studio to work all day and reading a book at night. Occasionally going outside to notice the small things like plants growing or bugs doing bug things. I looked out my window a lot and forgot how to interact with people. I think probably a lot of people had similar experiences."
A standalone VR app of this experience, created in Unreal, is also planned. Here's some other Bryn metaverse works over the years:
Comments