Experience video games like never before at the world premiere of ArtScience Museum’s latest exhibition Virtual Realms: Videogames Transformed. Put down your console as you see the world of video games go from screen to museum through a multi-sensorial, interactive presentation of artworks.
This exhibition is organised by the Barbican (London) in co-production with ArtScience Museum and Melbourne Museum. The artworks presented in Virtual Realms are a curation of some of the world’s leading video game developers such as KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS, the makers of DEATH STRANDING, David OReilly, the creator of the game, Everything, and other well-known names.
Six Realms Of Virtual Realms: Videogames Transformed
The immersive exhibition introduces visitors to new ways of approaching and enjoying videogames through six key themes – SYNESTHESIA, UNITY, CONNECTION, PLAY, NARRATIVE and EVERYTHING.
SYNESTHESIA
Synesthesia is a neurological phenomenon in which the senses are blurred and where sounds can be ‘seen’, and visuals ‘felt’. This exhibit is an experience for four participants at a time. Here, they will be part of the pulsing rhythmic beat and a ‘traveller’ on the Rezonance journey. Using light, sound and technology developed specifically for this exhibition, participants will go through their own unique experience of “seeing” and “touching” sound.
UNITY
In the UNITY realm, visitors can explore how music composition can be created with movement, light and sound. The dreamlike world of thatgamecompany’s Sky: Children of the Light (2019) is transformed into an immersive spatial environment. As visitors move beneath the circular light sculpture, music and audio fragments are triggered and visitors will witness the build-up of fragments of light and melody as the unity of people in the room bring the unity of the composition.
CONNECTION
The realm of connection is two gallery spaces featuring two opposing worlds – one is the microscopic world, and the other is flowing with galactic energy particles. As visitors approach the wall, the cells and cosmic particles will respond to their presence, dividing and clustering with one’s movement. This wall will play other past interactions and imprints as well as the patterns from other players on the other side of the wall. The mesmerising patterns that form will offer hints of communication between different spaces and time.
PLAY
The realm of PLAY celebrates the joyful and performative elements that video games inspire in the players. In Dream Shaping, visitors are equipped with tracking helmets that connect them to the virtual world of Dreams. Here, they will use oversized soft shapes in the play-space as props to interact with the virtual space projected on the screen. The players get to explore, and the onlookers can enjoy the visuals.
NARRATIVE
The NARRATIVE realm explores the power of video games to tell stories and construct new forms of fiction through the reimagined world of RiME. In this mysterious Mediterranean world of the Tequila Works’ game, visitors will enter a big 360 projection that they can interreact with. One will be able to move from scene to scene and solve puzzles in the game of RiME. Depending on the choices made and how one collaborates with others, each rendition of the narrative will be different.
EVERYTHING
The EVERYTHING realm celebrates the capacity of videogames to generate expansive universes and give shape to the infinite potential of our imagination. Here, visitors can rotate three oversized controllers to play with the ‘flow’, ‘scale’ and ‘warp’ of the shifting kaleidoscopic formations, or mandalas, on the screen. Unique patterns of living and non-living forms are continuously being generated. Every pattern created is one of a kind and will never be seen again. There is also space for visitors to sit back and enjoy this visual presentation while listening to a synchronised soundtrack from the London Symphony Orchestra.
Visit Virtual Realms: Videogames Transformed
Complementing the Virtual Realms is a lineup of unique programmes curated by the ArtScience Museum designed to showcase how video games can connect the virtual and physical worlds. Virtual Realms: Videogames Transformed will run from 12 June 2021 to 9 January 2022 Tickets are now available for purchase at all Marina Bay Sands Box Offices and website. Visit the Virtual Realms: Videogames Transformed website here.
