The Culture Series is a series of art shows designed to give artists of color a platform to express themselves. The series is curated by filmmaker Jeredon O’Connor. For the second show entitled "Primary" I presented the three primary colors in 3 separate mobile headsets.

Read more about Primary here.

Video Recap:

VR in a Group Exhibition:

After confirming my involvement in the show, I knew immediately I would utilize VR. For months prior I was constantly trying to enable my community with opportunities to access VR experiences. In doing so I provided many HTC Vive demos; one in one out. It’s an awesomely immersive platform, but it is ultimately slow for large crowds and intimidating to engage with for some. Another weakness I had found in top tier headsets was that their head strap’s were unable to accommodate a range of hairstyles. I knew this exhibition would be well attended, so my main goal was to create an accessible viewing experience.

Headset Choice, Accessibility vs Immersion:

The room-scale capabilities of the HTC Vive remain the most immersive VR solution, but it’s incompatibility with large groups was a deal breaker on for this event. The exhibition curator mentioned that they had 3 Samsung phones I could utilize, and overtime the concept of doing 3 different 3dof environments began to grow on me. After realizing that I could incorporate 3 customized phone viewer HMDs, I was convinced this was the way to go. What initially felt like a sacrifice of immersion proved to shine in accessibility. I presented 3 color coded headsets on a pedestal, free to be picked up and viewed. During the course of the opening I got to watch from afar as group after group picked up the headsets to share them between each other. The amount of folks that got see the work in a few hour window beat all of my previous demoing capabilities. The exhaustion of doing back to back HTC Vive demos was relieved. The approach-ability of tether-less and strapless headsets was also quite striking. Reflecting on the success of this showing further increases my excitement for wireless headsets like the Oculus Quest in art installations.

Below are renders of the worlds I presented.