Spatial Reality: Artists Explore the Future of XR

October 12 to October 28 | Event Calendar

VIRTUAL ART: PAST | PRESENT | FUTURE

Past Exhibit: Spatial Reality

October 12-28, 2018 View Exhibit

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First Look at AR Documentary Series

Our new mini-documentary on the past, present and future of virtual art (and news of our upcoming five-part series on VR) are showcased in a new column from Forbes’ VR expert Charlie Fink. Check it out!

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XR—a spectrum of ‘extended’ reality that includes virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR)—three-dimensionalizes the virtual world. After a half-century of computing in 2D, we are suddenly adding in the full expression of our bodies and our understanding of space.

The advent of mainstream immersive technologies is the single greatest amplification of human capability since the discovery of fire, a paradigm shift so massive we’ve only just begun to taste its impact. Marshall McLuhan famously claimed that “the medium is the message”—that the “message” inherent in any technology is the change of pace or pattern it introduces into human reality.

So what happens when reality itself is the medium?

For a question that big, we turn to the artists and storytellers: the visionaries who leapt over a precipice and into new worlds without any idea where they might land. And it deserves note that this leap takes a tremendous amount of courage. The work in this exhibition is unlike anything you’ve encountered, and it’s a sneak peek of the reality you’ll soon inhabit on a daily basis.

XR is still nascent, but as the art in this exhibition resoundingly asserts: not for much longer.

—Jesse Damiani, Curator/Producer

General admission tickets to Spatial Reality are complimentary. A reservation provides admission to the exhibit for the day specified on the ticket, but entry time is not guaranteed due to the limited capacity of the event space. Entry will be contingent on occupancy.

VIP tickets are available for $45 and provide guaranteed access at reserved 90-minute time slots (12:00pm-1:30pm, 1:30pm-3:00pm, 3:00pm-4:30pm, and 4:30pm-6:00pm for Saturdays and Sundays). VIP access does not apply to the Moonbloom experience.

In the interest of providing access to as many participants as possible, each of the XR experiences is limited to 10 minutes (except as indicated).

General and VIP admission will take place on Saturdays and Sundays, October 12-28, from 12-6pm.

View Event Calendar

All proceeds from the Spatial Reality exhibit directly benefit the contributing artists as well as ArtCenter, CalArts, City of Hope, and Innovate Pasadena.

sp[a]ce is part of Innovate Pasadena Connect Week 2018.

FEATURING OVER 25 WORKS FROM

Curatorial Consultant

Britt Salvesen

Curatorial Consultant:

Britt Salvesen, Curator and Head, Wallis Annenberg Photograph Department and Prints & Drawings Department, LACMA.

In his famous 1965 essay, Ivan Sutherland described “The Ultimate Display.” His claims for AR and VR were reiterated during the mid-1980s, and are finally—after a fifty-year evolution—coming to fruition in the augmented, mixed, and virtual reality experiences being developed today. Creative innovation is now occurring in tandem with advances in hardware and software, and broader audiences are responding to these new art forms. The tools for XR creation and display—once the purview of engineers, accessible mainly in academia and the military—are now much more accessible to anyone with a story to tell: game designers, painters, screenwriters, documentarians, journalists, architects, choreographers, and so on. Often working collaboratively across several disciplines, this diverse community of creators is discovering the technology’s potential, involving audiences in the very act of creation.

Britt Salvesen joined LACMA in October 2009 as curator and head of the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department and the Prints and Drawings Department. Previously, she was director and chief curator at the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, and adjunct professor in the Art History Department. She received her MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art and her PhD from the University of Chicago. In 2016, Salvesen was named one of the year’s most influential curators by Artsy and received an award for curator of the year from the Los Angeles Art Show. Her most recent curatorial projects at LACMA are Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium (winner of a Lucie Award and a Global Fine Art Award) and Guillermo del Toro: At Home with Monsters, both 2016; VR installation Alejandro González Iñárritu: Carne y Arena (2017); and 3D: Double Vision, which opened at LACMA in July 2018.

Britt Salvesen

Curatorial Consultant:

Britt Salvesen, Curator and Head, Wallis Annenberg Photograph Department and Prints & Drawings Department, LACMA.

Beneficiaries

sp[a]ce is a non-profit project
organized to benefit

Art Center College of Design’s mission is to educate artists and designers to make a positive impact in their chosen fields, as well as in the world at large. Dedicated to being an agent of influence in today’s world by using creativity to help communicate ideas and inspire positive action, Art Center benefits from sp[a]ce gallery through scholarships for non-privileged students.

Innovate Pasadena is a nonprofit, community-driven organization with the vision of creating a vibrant ecosystem of art, technology and science in our own neighborhood of Pasadena. Support from sp[a]ce gallery bolsters IP’s focus on helping support sustainable economic growth for our community.

California Institute of the Arts is an internationally renowned performance art school and Hybrid Incubator for Visionary Entrepreneurs (HIVE). Focused on bringing out visionary creative talent, CalArts benefits from sp[a]ce gallery’s support for entrepreneurial graduate students.

City of Hope, a cancer research institute, is transforming the future of health by turning science into practical benefits, and turning hope into reality. Through innovative research and cutting-edge science, City of Hope is focused on eliminating cancer and diabetes, funding for which is provided by sp[a]ce gallery.

Nancy Baker Cahill

About sp[a]ce

Three years in the making, sp[a]ce is a Kunsthalle project for showcasing the work of progressive international artists.

With an environment created by Corsini Stark Architects, the exhibits are complemented by a vision of architecture that reflects a seamless integration of building and site, form and space, light and material, and style and use. 

Located in beautiful Old Pasadena, sp[a]ce provides a venue for discovery, interaction and inspiration.

Contact

sp[a]ce
spaceinfo@ayzenberg.com
626.584.4070

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Hours
Gallery Closed through December 9
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Parking
Parking area located at the west side of the building. Enter through doors adjacent to parking area at:
Ayzenberg Parking and Entrance

39 E. Walnut St.
Pasadena, CA 91103

In addition to parking provided next to the a.network facilities, additional free 90-minute parking is available in the public underground lot on Raymond Avenue just south of Walnut Street.