Royal Academy of Arts

Virtually Real

12 - 14 Jan 2017

HTC Vive
VIRTUALLY REAL
12 — 14 January 2017

Step into virtually real works of art this January.

Please note that tickets have now sold out for this event.

We’re starting 2017 with Virtually Real, a collaborative pop-up project between the virtual reality platform HTC Vive and our contemporary art school, the Royal Academy Schools. Graduates Adham Faramawy and Elliot Dodd, together with third-year student Jessy Jetpacks, have been selected to create works of art using HTC Vive. This virtual reality technology lets you experience hundreds of simulated worlds, where the normal rules of gravity don’t apply.

The artists will be using software like Kodon and Tilt Brush by Google, a palette that lets you paint in virtual 3D space to produce installations that you, the visitor, will be able to move through and interact with. You’ll also be able to see their creative processes from start to finish with HTC Vive’s playback technology. As a world-first, we’ll be 3D printing these artworks and exhibiting them, so you will have the chance to interact with them both virtually and in real life. You’ll also be able to try your hand at creating a virtual reality masterpiece of your own.

Adham, Elliot and Jessy all have a background in working with virtual technology, apps and multimedia, but this will allow both them and you to experiment in the relatively unchartered waters of virtually made art.

Third-year RA Schools students will be taking over the DJ booth in the Keeper’s House from 7-11pm each night:
Thursday 12 January – Fani Parali and Sam Austen
Friday 13 January – Josephine Baker-Heaslip
Saturday 14 January – Richie Moment

Adham Faramawy
Alumnus, RA Schools
Adham Faramawy (b. 1981, Dubai) is a London-based artist of Egyptian origin. His work spans media including moving image, sculptural installation and print, engaging and using technology to discuss issues of embodiment and identity construction. Solo exhibitions include Janus Collapse (the juice-box edition), Bluecoat, Liverpool, Hydra, Cell Projects, London, Feels Real, Marian Cramer Projects, Amsterdam and Hyperreal Flower Blossom, VITRINE, London.

Elliot Dodd
Alumnus, fellow, RA Schools
Elliot Dodd (b.1978, Jersey), previously studied at the Slade School of Art, London and graduated from the Royal Academy Schools in 2016. Dodd works with surfaces and techniques which embody the spirit of the global techno-macho-man. He designs sculptural objects, drawings and moving images that reconfigure the languages of desire, confidence and authority into a new fluid, composite structure.

Jessy Jetpacks
Final-year student, RA Schools
Jessy Jetpacks (b. 1987, Dubai) is a London-based multi-disciplinary artist. Her mediums include painting, sculpture, film, music, audio/video installations, and performance. Subverting polemical binaries, Jetpacks explores her themes with sensitivity, finding humour and intrigue within the ouroboros-like metastructures, never wholly consistent or complete, which underpin any narrative of reality.