I went to an art gallery with my friends this week. No masks, no social distancing, no inter-district roadblocks. Also, no skin, flesh or bones; we were all phantom outlines, passing through each other as we sauntered from room to room. If that sounds more like a spooky fever-dream than a gallery experience, you wouldn’t be too far off. I am, of course, talking about
Artsteps, the virtual art exhibition software we were using.
Beginning in the mid-90s as flat images to be scrolled through on a webpage, virtual galleries have come a long way. Some of the most impressive exhibits (Ilham Gallery’s
The Body Politic and the Body, for example) function similarly to Google Street View: presented with a number of stitched-together panorama shots of the gallery, you look around and ‘move’ between predetermined points. And then there are platforms like Artsteps and
Kunstmatrix. They’re different. These tools build a virtual 3D space from scratch, which you can walk inside as in a video game, even joining other visitors. The implications are fascinating, but what’s the experience actually like? I registered an Artsteps account, gathered a few reluctant friends, and together we visited a Malaysian exhibition, ARTO Movement’s
Sacred Garden, to find out.
Artsteps is a simple platform; it runs in browsers, on mobile phones, and apparently has VR support. You use the WASD keys to walk, but have to click and drag the mouse to look around. It’s a small and somewhat annoying feature of the software, but something we got used to quickly. With the mouse, you can click on the ground to automatically walk to that location, or click on a work of art to get a straight-ahead view of it.