“World of Hiroshige” by Weight, Flood and Neill
Conference:
Experience Type(s):
Title:
- World of Hiroshige
Presenter(s):
Description:
‘The World of Hiroshige’ is an immersive virtual reality experience that allows the participants to interact with the world of the Japanese artist Utagawa Hiroshige. The project was developed by the Master of Animation and Visualisation students at the UTS Animal Logic Academy as part of their studies in emergent visualisation technologies. The project reaches beyond existing art VR experiences in that it allows users to immerse themselves in the environment, period, activities and customs of the time the artworks were created, and also to find places that align to the views of some of the artist’s well-known works. Although originally created as a virtual reality experience (using a VR headset), the project can be re-purposed as a small room installation using 360 degree projection (or LED displays) and motion and gesture tracking to allow viewers to walk through and interact an immersive room-experience. The research phase of the project explored new ways of adapting existing art works into immersive environments, which included such techniques as neural style transfer (although not adopted in this iteration of the project). The research group also explored ways of interacting with art works, such as planting clues and artefacts that the user can investigate and explore. Although these elements can be combined in a larger narrative, the outcome of the user research indicated that art-fans preferred to immersive themselves in the artist’s works and worlds, and relished in the opportunity to not only experience the artist’s works in immersive 3D, but also to explore the ukiyo, or “floating world” which inspired the works. The project was developed as a high-fidelity prototype and proof of concept that can be expanded to other artists and works. The immersive interaction can also be expanded from a personal virtual reality experience to immersive spatial environments for broadscale interaction.
