“We’re born naked, and the rest is drag.” – Ru Paul, Lettin’ It All Hang Out, 1995 /// Australian digital media artist Alison Bennett says that Virtual Drag came to her “like a bright flash.” It may not seem obvious at first, the connection between drag performance and virtual reality, but once the
Top Chef notwithstanding, it is rarely advisable to see how a sausage is made. This is not a new aphorism—aphorisms are rarely new—but technology has given it new resonance. It has never been easier to distribute bonus content, to be ‘closer’ to artists, and to see heretofore-mysterious processes. A
Though virtual reality has existed in some form since the 1960s, and in the realm of science fiction for much longer, 2016 promises to be a breakthrough year for the technology, with high-profile product launches and major releases in games and film. With that in mind we are thrilled to announce our
How long have you spent inside virtual reality in total—an hour? Two hours? 24 hours? It’s probably only a small number of hours as it takes quite the toll on your eyes and brain. And that’s if you don’t get the infamous nausea it brings on for a lot of people. But heck, try telling that to Thorsten
On the occasion of CES, the annual “consumer” electronics extravaganza in Las Vegas, murmurs started to be heard about whether virtual reality headsets were all that useful, particularly at the prices at which they are being sold. Better late than never. CNN, however, is here to distract from the do
This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel. Today, almost everyone can access entertainment on their PCs, consoles, tablets and smartphones. Anyone eager to own a new virtual reality headset, however, must first find out if their trusty computer is up to the task. Oculus released its c
Libraries, huh, yeah. What are they good for? With apologies to Edwin Starr and Betteridge’s Law, the answer to that question is probably not “absolutely nothing, uh-huh uh-huh.” That’s a start, but it still leaves the not insignificant question of what, exactly, a library is good for in this day an
New York artist Rachel Rossin sees beauty in an ersatz sunset. “GTA V has some of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen and they give me a very similar experience to the sublime that I experience in ‘real life,’” she says. “This was very interesting as my show, Lossy, was about the translation
Imagine, if you will, a white empty volume. It’s a room. Now fill it with toys. Stuff ’em in there willy nilly. There’s a basketball, balloons, toy swords, bowling pins, propellers, nets, large die, colorful blocks to climb or topple over. Send a bunch of kids into this room and what do you think wi
Despite being a child of ’90s clubbing and music television, the 2001 rail shooter Rez didn’t quite resonate with its majority audience as its visionary creators had hoped it would. A small niche of players got it—no, they really got it—but it didn’t have the impact of, say, a killer DJ set sending
VR had me skeptical, but then again, I’m pretty much always skeptical of new gaming technology. Similarly, when Microsoft’s Kinect rolled around, so too did my eyeballs, right into the back of my skull. I can lazily holler at my Xbox to turn on? Big deal. With VR, I could scan my entire surroundings
The common conceit associated with virtual reality filmmaking is that the technology gives you a profound insight into the lives of others. More spatial depth, the theory goes, is correlated with more emotional depth. Welcome to the magical empathy machine! This sort of technological determinism is
Californium doesn’t have the look of a videogame about Philip K. Dick. We’re used to the somber, rainy cityscapes of Blade Runner when we think of the sci-fi author. Yet it may be the truest adaptation of the man and his work yet—the vibrant wash of summery hues included. It’s to be a first-person e
The New York Times has a new virtual reality offering—and no, it isn’t called Jayson Blair. NYT VR, which launched last weekend, is a new storytelling venture or, as The Grey Lady calls it with alarming frequency, an “experience.” Using the NYT VR app, you can view (experience?) video stories with a
If you’re still anxiously awaiting the hungry jaws of the big monster heads in GNOG, you’ll have to keep waiting until its 2016 release date. But, in the meantime, feel free to get swallowed up by the latest screens released by Ko-Op Mode. The screens highlight GNOG‘s polished yet playful art style,
Living in the Bay Area, Land’s End for me is the overly windy cliffside overlooking the chilly, probably densely-polluted San Francisco bay. For critically acclaimed Monument Valley creator Ustwo Games, Land’s End is something else entirely—a quiet, meditative VR game that was released today. In its
“In a lot of ways, you could call us an art collective,” says Vic Bassey, COO of Might and Delight, the creators of the naturalistic game series Shelter. “We’re a small team of extremely creative thinkers and doers with an appreciation of the arts. Be it literature, music or more contemporary forms
A lot is going on at The Chinese Room at the moment. Perhaps not as much as before Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture was released, or necessarily more than any other studio out there, but what is going on is being documented in surprisingly personal and honest blogs. This is going to start off grim an
Tale of Tales has revealed what its “non-game art project” Cathedral-in-the-Clouds is all about by launching a Kickstarter to fund it. The idea is to create a cathedral that you can enter through a virtual reality headset and then, from there, admire a series of dioramas located within its radiating
In 1990, on the hundredth anniversary of Vincent van Gogh’s death, the Journal of the American Medical Association posited that the impressionist had suffered from “Ménière’s disease and not epilepsy.” A disorder of the inner ear, Ménière’s disease is known to cause nausea, hearing troubles, tinnitu
