From the Artist’s Perspective: On the Longevity of VR/AR Artworks

Abstract

The technological leaps of our time have brought virtuality to the forefront, with technologies such as Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR) becoming easily accessible creative tools for artists. However, technology itself has made VR/AR artworks a challenging category of objects for collecting institutions. Since 2019, we have been researching the current practices of acquiring, exhibiting and preserving VR/AR artworks in collecting institutions via the MuseumArtTech project. Eight professionals working in institutions that engage with VR/AR artworks and five artists who use VR/AR technologies as a main art medium were interviewed, with the aim being to understand the processes, challenges and experiences of museum professionals and identify the artists’ standpoint in relation to the institutional management of their artworks. This paper addresses the artists’ perspective, by examining how their creative process informs, and potentially increases, the longevity of their VR/AR artworks, as well as how this process may reveal the nature of the reciprocal artist-institution relationship.