Last year I started exploring some of the online galleries I'd heard about, partially out of curiosity around new media art and partially because I hadn't been able to get out to visit galleries due to lockdown and was conscious of a rise in alternative art-viewing spaces.
After coming across Xi Li's Spirit Ether, which at the time was available as an online exhibition (explorable in VR), I came across www.newart.city. The site is a space for virtual online exhibitions and new media art, and allows visitors to explore artworks via desktop or mobile devices - exhibitions often incorporate photography, animation, sound art and other media to form immersive digital gallery spaces. Having just gotten into experimenting with VR and faced with the possibility of not being able to exhibit my drawings in their original form (sharing a headset is a bit of a Covid hazard), being able to wander through a virtual gallery in a headset was a really interesting and immersive feeling. My interest in these virtual spaces comes out of curiosity about the creation and existence of digital realms, spaces and experiences, as well as the challenge of presenting virtual work in a meaningful way. In future I'd love to create my own abstract online gallery space - I've been thinking about creating some kind of memory-field or digital brain map of experiences, thoughts, sensations, etc. on a more immersive or expansive level this year, and this format could be a good option - particularly if I continue to explore ideas of a hyperreality, rhizomatic information/knowledge systems or physical/digital mediation. For the time being though, these exhibitions are helping me conceptualise art-marking with new media materials, and have given me some ideas about what my work could explore in future - specifically, how the physical arrangement of components could come together to create an immersive work, be they offline or online.
Below: screenshots of the Experience Near Death exhibition by room69, an interdisciplinary artist-led collective developing digital exhibition formats, new media arts and installation. Art objects in the space varied from sculptures, mixed digital media works, sound installations, video, etc.
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