After the very informative days of the netidee Community Camp, our team had its first meeting to discuss the planning and future work in the ARTverse project. Therefore, we are already busy within this cooperation between researchers at VRVis and the Science Visualization Lab at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

What is ARTverse?

ARTverse aims to be a platform for creating, teaching and exhibiting art natively in virtual reality (VR). Currently, most artists use desktop applications to visualize their work in VR. They then upload their creations into immersive environments. We believe that VR is a new medium with huge potential and thus, want to explore it fully as a creative space.

Our plan & goals

For the ARTverse project, we want to build a network of collaboration with artists, art schools, universities, art galleries, museums, people and institutions interested in art. We discussed strategies for building up this network at our kick-off meeting at VRVis, where the entire team got together in person for the first time. 

We agreed on the project plan and talked about possible solutions to make ARTverse an open source project, meeting the expectations of the community of people interested in digital art and virtual reality.

First steps

After the meeting, our group started working on defining the platform that we want to use for hosting ARTverse. We are currently testing various VR platforms and reviewing available documentation to add custom toolkits for creating, teaching, and exhibiting art. 

VR meetings

In order to test the (possible) platform, our group has started to hold meetings in virtual reality. It helps us to discuss various features in the environment in which they will be used, and it is definitely great fun to talk to each other using avatars.