Reality and Virtual Reality

Julian Opie

Reality and virtual reality, pictures hanging on the wall and images projected in mind. The artist works between these worlds, or at least I do.

One day I walked up to the attic and a swarm of bats immediately surrounded me. They have no eyesight and rely on the reflection of sound waves in the dark to build a spatial model of the loft in their minds. They do not understand space through thinking or sound information, but by seeing, just like us. Bats have a clear picture of the space around them in their minds, including the insects they are trying to feed on, and they fly accurately and quickly through it. This reflects a unique way of thinking for bats, perhaps very different from our way. Or perhaps even the colors they see take on a different texture. Is this the true face of reality? Or is it just a virtual world created by the echoes in their minds?

Similarly, we think we see the real world, but in reality it is just a mental model built by our brains translating images reflected on our retinas and reversed up and down, relying on a lot of cross-referencing, filtering and memory. People who are born blind but regain their sight take months to understand the changing light in order to build our so-called reality, a trick we learn in infancy.

Sometimes I look at natural and man-made landscapes and trust that I will find a way to use them. I look for ready-made visual languages and use them in my paintings; they are like the spoken language we share, allowing me to express and to be understood. I paint what I have seen and they establish a different reality, the way artists have acted since ancient times when people who gathered and hunted painted animals on rock walls. Over the years I have exhibited paintings and sculptures in the rooms of the museum, wanting to share my mode of thinking and create a mirror world that is visually and tactilely isomorphic to reality.

During the preparation of the exhibition, I started to use VR glasses to digitally load my works into the spatial model of the museum and gallery. I gradually realized that I was enjoying being in these spaces and would find ways to experience them again from time to time. The reason was simple: to have fun. I began to imagine that if I were to do exhibitions only in these virtual spaces, I would not be subject to the many limitations of the real world: sculptures would need to be made with weight or fragility in mind; works that move would require electronics; and lighting would have limitations and need to be subject to gravity. With VR glasses, all of these barriers are gone.

My initial attempts were fancy, but they ended up being as boring and trite as magic or fireworks. The best way remains to stick close to our familiar reality, to build a normal gallery space with sculptures on stands and paintings on the walls. That way, the audience will feel like they are in a familiar world and will want to step into it slowly.

3D computer games have been around for a long time and I was deeply influenced by it, but VR glasses seem to offer more possibilities. Not only is it a three-dimensional interactive image, but it can also invite the viewer into a completely different new world through a variety of senses - hearing, touch, sight, and a sense of balance.

The world of imagination and fantasy is lonely and we can only experience it in person.

Currently, my VR exhibition is about to do so. This is my first VR exhibition, and I feel like I have opened the door to multiple possibilities. Most of the creations presented in the exhibition are digital versions of works I have exhibited before. But they present the possibility that my other works might take me to entirely new realms - something that could never happen in the real world that I have been living in.