Category Biennale 4D

In a previous post the challenges of displaying 2D objects within a 3D space were discussed and texture mapping was introduced as a possible approach to display archival photos within an immersive VR experience. In this article insights gained on this matter through further experiments are shared. One of the most common practice for this purpose is placing pictures on billboards. Aspects such as the design of these billboards, their positioning, the reconstruction of observation points as well as the visual markers that guide the user to these viewpoints and last but not least the user interaction, that triggers the display of the additional content in the proper context, were investigated.

Biennale 4D is an immersive Virtual Reality experience that allows users to explore the archives of past art exhibitions. In addition to digital documentation of the individual art works in form of images and metadata, the Biennale archives contain additional artefacts such as expressive historic shots taken during the actual exhibitions. These pictures offer unique insights and share more of the spirit and atmosphere of the past events. The quest is to make these artefacts available to the user in a suitable way within an immersive VR experience.

VR today is heavily driven by technology and the design of many applications is influenced by the technology’s strong roots and prevalence in the gaming industry. Thanks to advancements in rendering and increase in computation power, photorealism is nowadays technically possible, however a higher degree of realism is not advisable for every application. It is important to critically examine what is the most appropriate rendering aesthetics for a given application context. A more realistic representation style indirectly transmits a notion of certainty, it takes much of the users attention and last but not least in the context of the Biennale 4D project it would present a big contrast to the quality and character of the archival artefacts.