Visit the VR Gallery
from Harris’ critical essay and reflections on the residency:
Virtual reality is often associated with immersive experiences and the creation of worlds beyond the limitations of physical space. But for artists, its possibilities go much further. VR offers a different way of thinking about making art, challenging familiar relationships with materials, scale, space and how an audience experiences work.
Working in VR requires a shift in thinking. Gravity, scale and the limitations of physical materials no longer apply in quite the same way. Objects can be enlarged, manipulated or experienced from perspectives that would be impossible in the physical world. But having this freedom doesn't necessarily make the creative process easier. Learning unfamiliar software, finding the right tools and understanding how they might contribute to an artistic idea can be challenging in itself.
Although VR is often presented as an alternative to physical reality, I found the relationship between the two particularly interesting. Early experiments using passthrough technology allowed digital drawings to be created around existing physical objects. Rather than replacing what was already there, these interventions changed how familiar objects could be seen and interpreted.
This led to the development of Tiny Temples, a series of small sculptures exploring the contrast between what we see on the outside and what people hold within themselves. The work moved between virtual and physical processes. Forms created in Gravity Sketch were 3D printed, then developed further using lighting and projection.
What began as an experiment in virtual space eventually became a collection of physical objects. Interestingly, although VR allows artists to work at almost any scale, the resulting sculptures were deliberately small. This introduced an unexpected challenge: how could objects created within an expansive virtual environment be presented meaningfully in a gallery? Narrow, elevated plinths, internal lighting and projection became part of the solution, demonstrating how the way work is exhibited can be just as important as the process of making it.
For me, this was one of the most interesting discoveries of the residency. VR didn't replace physical making; it introduced another stage into the creative process, allowing ideas to move between digital and physical forms.