Immersive Art for Dummies

The lecture on immersive technology given by Abdullah Ba Mashmos at SlavConf Virtuality started with a question: “What is art?”

According to Abdullah, “This is the most arguable question in the art industry, because there is no specific definition for art and as much as you discuss with people, they come up with different definitions and with different forms of art. For me, art is an expression. When someone is trying to express an idea, a thought, a story or what they are thinking about”.

Abdullah Ba Mashmos explained the essentials of immersive art by making a comparative analysis and overview of VR, AR, installation and projection. He also gave tips on how to choose the right medium to convey the artistic concept and to target the right audience. As a demonstrative study case he chose an example concept: King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture – Ithra.

He was fascinated by the architectural style of the building and the internal pillars chosen by the architect which have a triangular base and a quadrangular top. This effect is achieved by torsion of their sides and with the movement of the sun, the shadows of the pillars create diverse visual images. To Abdullah this concept design made the space interesting to feel and be in at all times, as each time it is different. He wanted to bring this experience to life and make this object even more interesting, to relocate it anywhere and allow even more people to access the experience using only a QR code.

Before demonstrating live how this can be achieved, he presented a list of tools for creating AR and explained how to choose the right ones for the project as they have different features and they are created for different purposes. He stated that many of the tools are open source and easy to use by anyone, even beginners without much experience.