Rendering the Invisible: Prototyping a Virtual Exhibition for Immersive Media at Chatham

The Program

Apr 25

Written By

Shimul Chowdhury
Immersive Media

Project Overview

One of the challenges collectively faced at the end of each semester within the Immersive Media program is: how do we show what we’ve done? How do we share our work with our peers, then document and archive it for the future? How do I, as an instructor who also wears the hats of the curator, exhibition designer, and marketing manager, ensure that the impact and experience of a live immersive experience is adequately attended, considered, and recorded? Can immersive media even be experienced in a meaningful way if not done so live and in person? These are the questions that I asked myself when considering what sort of tech-centered project I might attempt to pursue while teaching in an already highly tech-centered program. By reflecting on past curatorial and archival projects in my personal practice, I plan to explore potential platforms and form factors for a Chatham Immersive Media digital exhibition.

Planning Process

When considering this project, I first recalled my experiences curating and designing exhibitions full of all sorts of digital media as the Art Director of MIPSTERZ. MIPSTERZ is a Muslim arts and culture collective whose members are creatives with all sorts of artistic, musical, and performance backgrounds. As the resident digital and new media artist, I have spent the past 6 years curating and designing several exhibitions, large and small.

I curate a wide range of different media for these exhibitions. Artworks exhibited have included everything from paintings on wood panels that are 6’ tall to virtual reality installations to card games to entire rooms transformed into interactive spaces. My process for designing an exhibition in a physical space typically starts with a series of sketches–I take my understanding of the footprint of each artwork and do my best to arrange them into a two-dimensional floor plan. The considerations for placement relate to logistics such as the space needed, proximity to power and outlets, and how visitors enter and exit a space. Beyond these logistics, it is also important to consider thematic connections, the potential emotional journey or impact a visitor has while navigating a gallery space, and the possibility of user participation or contribution. Many of these considerations are specifically determined by the constraints and limitations of the physical space.

After a 2D floor plan is drafted, I take the planning a step further by developing a navigable 3D visualization using tools such as Twinmotion or Unity Game Engine. This video [linked here] is an example of a preliminary draft where the bare bones of scale, placement, lighting, and treatments are being considered within this virtual space. While the final result often looks quite different from this visualization, having a 3D mockup helps the entire team have a comprehensive understanding of how visitors may interact with and experience the exhibition.

For this Tech Fellows project, I am strongly referencing my time spent visualizing IRL exhibitions virtually during these preliminary planning stages. While much of my decision-making when creating these mockups is influenced by the practical limitations of the actual space, these visualizations do allow for some room to consider playful approaches, novel outcomes, and meaningful interactions. It is this element of creative freedom and possibility that I think would translate well to a potential virtual or digital archive of Immersive Media student artworks.

Creating a virtual exhibition space falls directly in line with the immersive multimedia and often-interactive artworks that our students develop. Their work, which so often is only witnessed by a select few who make it down to the basement of the Jennie King Mellon Library, would be accessible to a far larger and more diverse audience. They would be a part of the exhibition design process, utilizing what they learn in our program about user experience and human-centered design to make meaningful decisions about the presentation of their work in virtual space. These decisions would influence their design processes in the future, providing them with the opportunity to think beyond their limited experience of being a student at Chatham University in Pittsburgh, PA and considering themselves as new media artists making work for unknown audiences or clients virtually anywhere in the world.

Implementation

This project has not yet been implemented in its full capacity. At present, I am still very much in the weeds of the planning stages, thinking about what an initial draft version of this platform might look like and what sort of features I would need to consider. I am conducting research on existing virtual exhibition tools, such as Google’s “Immersive” 3D Exhibitions or the independently-developed New Art City. I am also conducting research on different types of archives, both those which are passively consumed and others which have the potential to be interactive.

After compiling resources, I plan to approach the project similarly to how I have designed physical exhibits. I will create a checklist of immersive media artworks (likely only projects from a singular course–perhaps Studio III: Serious Play) and take the time to consider what their most crucial features are. I will then break down how to best translate what are often interactions and features that are best experienced live into potentially-adequate virtual equivalents. This process will require a great deal of experimentation and likely a lengthy period of time prototyping within a series of different tools to determine what is even possible.

After this stage of sketching, prototyping, and iteration is when I would involve students in the design process, asking them to attempt to make decisions based on what we have found to be doable within the chosen platform. As with exhibition design in a physical space, this stage is likely to take several months if not a year.

When exactly I will be able to implement a live version of this exhibition and/or archive is difficult to say. There is a great deal of exploration that must occur before I can estimate how, when, or what the outcome will be. The experience of theorizing and visualizing the possibilities will be fruitful, nonetheless. As previously noted, IMM has a specific focus on human-centered design as well as the importance of ethics and access in a wide variety of new and digital media. Even the exercise of ideating a potential virtual exhibition will provide clear learning objectives and feedback for students tasked with designing interactive and immersive installations and projects.

Assessment

When I am further along in the project, I plan to informally assess the project by conducting interviews and holding seminar-style discussions about the meaningful takeaways from the process of designing virtual spaces. I believe that narrative-style assessments (which are typical for our project-based courses and curriculum) will provide me with the much-needed insight and feedback for a more formal and complex iteration of this idea.

Reflections and Next Steps

The project is still underway so it is difficult to say what has or has not yet worked. I hope to reflect on this in the near future.