Virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality, total immersion in virtual worlds and superimposing data onto our reality—for several years now, everybody has been talking up these concepts and ideas once again. The VRLab in the Ars Electronica Center’s Main Gallery showcases the latest VR, AR and MR technologies.
Since the first industrial revolution, automation has been one of the primary instruments of increasing productivity, that is replacing human workforce with task-performing machines. The thermo-mechanical models of the early industrial age have now evolved by into more complex electro-computational networks, where scripted interactions are staking out an ever-growing number of domains and specialist fields.
Morphogenesis is the biological process that causes an organism to develop its shape. As a virtual-reality piece, Morphogenesis consists of continuous transformation of fundamental geometrical patterns and uses them as the building blocks of immersive spaces. It embodies the systems that produce the complexity we encounter in the living world.
At the “Holodeck” you can try out the newest VR-technology and learn about the huge number of functions and possibilities.
Österreich Werbung has used HTC Vive technology to develop an interactive virtual-reality tour of Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum. This project is one of Europe’s first virtual-reality documentaries with user-determined storytelling, and superbly demonstrates the possibilities of interactive video documentary in virtual reality.
In the Pogrom Night in November 1938, a mob acting on orders of the Nazi regime broke into the Linz Synagogue—like so many other Jewish houses of worship that night—ransacked it and set it ablaze. All that remained of the synagogue was a burnt-out ruin. In conjunction with the work on his master’s thesis at the Technical University of Vienna, René Mathe created a virtual reconstruction of the Linz Synagogue.