VR and AR Prototypes for Multi-sensory and Haptic Forms of Documentation and Archiving of Digital Art (LeFo Project)

Marie-Claude Poulin, University of Applied Arts Vienna (Austria)

The presentation introduces the development of virtual and augmented reality prototypes designated as a « Virtual Meta-Set » for three existing digital art installation/performance works and their processual artifacts. These are designed to simulate and reconstitute the artworks and their genesis history in a virtual environment that allows travel between them and their documentary and annotative material. The goal is to investigate the constitution of a 3D archival user experience in which the metadata of each creation process are accessible and can be cross-referenced at any time.The database contains “classical” and atypical documentary components such as lines of code and user data, distributed and staged in the same multi-layered virtual landscape. A portable controller allows users to access hyperlinks, manipulate virtual assets, and reorganize the space. Through their actions, they explore the environment, and a tracking of their movements, combined with their manual and verbal commands, turns the virtual space in a walkable, haptic experience.Bringing distinct artworks to converge in this “Virtual Meta-Set” is not simply a technical feat, it is an artistic mission which, through simulation and immersive reconstitution, generates a new form of re-enactment. The challenge is also to test whether this type of epistemological-artistic environment, in which the immersion factor is an integral part, can lead to a new kind of meta-reflection on creative processes.

Marie-Claude Poulin is Senior Artist at the fulldomeXR Lab/University of Applied Arts Vienna and founder and co-director of the digital performance group kondition pluriel. Her research combines choreographic strategies, motion analysis/notation, digital visualization, programming rules, and modes of user interaction in XR and AI environments. She has performed for Meg Stuart and Benoit Lachambre and presented her work at venues such as ZKM, ISEA, EMPAC, SAT, CYNETart, ICA and Ars Electronica.