Whether it’s a metaverse meeting or virtual workplace, an immersive and intense gaming experience, or new ways to build, create, and imagine in design and architecture, VR is undeniably inserting itself more and more into the fabric of the real world. Even the art world is getting on the bandwagon through a new app that lets people view stolen artworks from around the world via a Meta Quest headset.

The app, dubbed “The Stolen Gallery,” was developed by Brazilian tech firm Compass UOL and is available for iOS and Android smartphones. The headset immerses users into a stark, black-walled gallery lined with famous works that were stolen from museums around the world — more specifically, five famous pieces by Van Gogh, Cézanne, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, and Manet.

The chance to view these works in a VR simulation presents a new way to appreciate lost treasures that have literally been stolen from the cultural consciousness. We’ve been able to see them in 2D on our computer screens for awhile, but now, with this VR gallery tour, it’s possible to approach the paintings as if they were up in actual gallery.

Don’t expect a lot of bells and whistles, though. The app is simplicity incarnate — a deliberate choice by its creators, who wanted the art to be the star of the show. As Compass UOL CEO and co-founder Alexis Rockenbach recently explained, “We ended up choosing…a minimalist approach, where you [are] in this dark space [and] the only thing you are really paying attention to is the art piece.”

The app’s purpose is not to replace brick and mortar art museums, or even supplant the virtual tours that have risen in popularity throughout the pandemic and remained as a way for people everywhere to enjoy world-famous galleries from the comfort of their own homes. Rather, it was intended as a way to explore the ways that VR and metaverse technology can be applied to our everyday lives, a means of “expand[ing] the notion about what is the metaverse,” Rockenbach says.

“The Stolen Gallery” app is free to iOS and Android users, but for the full VR experience, a Meta Quest headset is necessary.

The post This New App Brings Stolen Art Back to (Virtual) Life first appeared on Dornob.

Additionally, with the rise of the “virtual” workspace, NFTs, and other means of expanding the digital world in business, it comes as no surprise that the first office in the metaverse would be the wave of the future. And the future is now.

A first in the architectural sphere, Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) has taken the leap into virtual stardom with their completion of the first office in the metaverse. Dubbed “Viceverse,” the office will serve as the new, entirely virtual HQ for Vice Media Group (VMG). Located in Decentraland’s vast, open world digital platform, VMG’s new space is the first of its kind, and an apropos addition to other virtual initiatives led by VMG’s innovation division Virtue Futures, itself an important part of the agency’s creative arm, Virtue Worldwide (known for their launch of Coca-Cola’s first NFT last year).

With so many heavy hitters involved in the project, it’s no surprise that this group of creators used their forward-thinking initiatives to imagine a workplace entirely in the metaverse – an “innovation lab” where teams can collaborate, experiment, and develop projects like new NFTs, DAOs, and the “future of the Internet.”

Recognizing that “the creative opportunities within the metaverse are hugely exciting,” Virtue Futures’ Global Executive Creative Director Morten Grubek recently expressed the agency’s desire to add their own company to the list of others they have helped navigate the metaverse, a vision “that has taken on a new reality” with the addition of BIG spearheading the architectural side of the project.

As you’d expect from the daring Danish designers, Viceverse is just as stylish as the architect’s brick and mortar buildings – a sleek and swirly composition that fits in beautifully with its pixellated surroundings. And much like an office here in the non-virtual world, Viceverse will offer employees the chance to collaborate with each other and with clients, developing new projects, experimenting with upcoming technologies, and presenting ideas through in-world communications and presentations.

As Nancy Duboc, CEO of Vice Media Group, recently stated, “Vice has always been about being inside culture…This is a new frontier filled with potential and once again, we’re proud to be pushing the boundaries.”

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To solve these problems, tech companies like Virtuix and Kat have introduced first-stage omnidirectional treadmills, while companies like Cybershoes have created wheeled footwear that can approximate the movement of running while swinging the legs in a seated position. These are all on the right track generally, but none have actually been able to mimic the real-life motions of walking while in a game. Enter the Ekto One VR boots.

While still in the prototype phase, the Ekto One are individual shoes with motorized wheels that can track the users’ movements and propel them backwards each time they take a step forward. Each boot is essentially a mini treadmill, but because they attach to the feet, the user can theoretically move in any direction while still remaining in the designated play space.

This feat is achieved by attaching a pair of Vive visual trackers to each shoe to monitor the user’s position in real-time. While it may look strange to an outside observer, the wearers feel enveloped in their game or training without any accompanying nausea.

Some reviewers who have tried out the beta shoes report that there are certainly a lot of kinks to work out. For starters, they take a full five minutes to attach. Users keep on their normal footwear and slip them into the adjustable Ekto Ones, cinching them down for a snug fit. Then extra ankle sensors are attached and properly positioned.

Reviewers also complain about the weight and clunkiness of the boots. Because of their bulk, just walking around in them for 20 minutes can be a workout, especially as the user has to be careful not to let the shoes bump into each other to avoid falling.

On the other hand, users did like that that the shoes’ soles are divided into two moveable parts, providing more flexibility in walking than just a solid piece of plastic.

Currently, the company is selling the Ekto One shoes for between $15,000 and $20,000, a less-than consumer-friendly price tag. The VR footwear is being marketed to businesses right now in hopes of securing enough funding to further develop and scale the product to make it more affordable for the masses.

The Ekto Ones go way beyond gaming, too. Businesses can utilize the boots for industrial training purposes for things like VR simulations of complex and hazardous environments. Theme parks and museums can also purchase them to provide commercial VR experiences for their visitors.

With more funding from corporations and venture capitalists, the shoes should eventually become lighter and nimble enough to simulate natural movement. While the Ekto One VR boots may not be the complete answer to turning our world into Ready Player One just yet, they’re certainly a step in the right direction.

The post VR Boots Give Users a More Immersive Metaverse Experience first appeared on Dornob.

Swiss brand LAUFEN, who manufactures designer bathrooms, teamed up with architects Gabrielle Hächler and Andreas Fuhrimann to create what feels like a fever dream of bizarre bathroom concepts highlighting its products. Each one tries to capture a different mood with graphics, videos, animations, and soundscapes, taking you on a journey through a series of spaces where you may or may not notice LAUFEN’s toilets, sinks, tubs, and other bathroom fixtures making appearances in between all the weirdness.

The URBAN room is described as “a platform of hope and reflection,” featuring industrial machinery, birds, a UFO, and quite a few dystopian elements alongside the brand’s products.

The DESERT room full of cacti, wind turbines, and Joshua trees is a bit more cheerful and relaxing, even with the frog popping out of the toilet at the end.

In the FOREST room, scenes of deer, trees in the night, and a moonlit sky are interspersed with layers of code. Are you on mushrooms? Are you actually hooked up to a machine in a depressing post-apocalyptic environment while your consciousness experiences The Matrix? Who knows. What’s important here is that LAUFEN’s contemporary bathroom pieces actually look really good in this strange space. Maybe you should get some forest-themed wallpaper to go with them.

In the ARTIST room, we see artist Michelle Baumann and the commissioned art pieces she created for this collaboration: bold, graphic shapes in vivid colors splashed across LAUFEN’s fixtures. It’s enough to make you wonder, briefly, why we don’t see items like these available in creative colors and patterns more often. Then we remember resale value.

The point of the LAUFEN Virtual Space isn’t to replicate real-world bathrooms, naturally. It’s a marketing campaign, but it’s fun and arty. In a press release, the company explains that “in midst of the pandemic, online virtual rooms provide a context to products, guided by a meaningful message. Senses such as touch, smell, and personal relations are getting dangerously neglected with disastrous consequences on mental as well as physical health. This forces us to reinvent the ecosystem of communication and relationships through the creation of formats that blur the lines between digital and physical.”

“LAUFEN virtual space is about exploring a dream-like landscape through four different Kartell by LAUFEN sets and nature-infused stories that let one wander and wonder. The space wants to provide an experience of digitally animated, semi-interactive collages. Surreal spaces with a wink and the purposely very tactile feel while being fully immersed in the digital. A journey of process and progress telling a story and carefully taking the products by the hand. Almost like strolling through a LAUFEN booth at a fair designed by architect Gabrielle Hächler and Andreas Fuhrimann.”

Check out the LAUFEN Virtual Space website to get the whole experience, sound and all.

The post LAUFEN Virtual Space Lets You Explore Surreal AR Bathroom Designs first appeared on Dornob.

Air France

The Paris-based airline recently renovated its La Première lounge at the Charles de Gaulle Airport to give first-class passengers their own separate check-in area. On board, a policy update now gives single guests the freedom to book all four suites in the La Première section for maximum privacy and room. The first-class showers have also been updated, and the in-flight meals on routes departing from CDG are getting the celebrity treatment from now until October, with three-time Michelin star chef Arnaud Donckele preparing them all. Air France aircraft with La Première sections are currently flying from Paris to Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco, and Washington D.C.

British Airways

The company, headquartered in London, recently installed more socially distanced pods in the first-class area of its Boeing 777-300ER jets. Each roomy seat now features a sliding door that can provide greater privacy and germ-protection. The upgraded seats also got updated infotainment screens and longer padded cushions and beds.

Emirates

For those missing the flying experience but still squeamish about sharing germs in an enclosed space, Dubai-based Emirates is offering a virtual reality tour of its first-class section. Using the Oculus VR app, grounded flyers can “walk” around the spacious seats and head down to the Onboard Lounge. Future versions are expected to allow customers to explore destinations, select a cabin, and even book their flight within the VR app.

For those who are ready to take to the skies, the Emirates A380 planes still offer a true extravagance at 35,000 feet, complete with two “shower spas” (a full shower/powder room with heated floors) in each first-class area.

Qatar Airways

Qatar recently announced that it will be bringing its double-decker Airbus 380 back as of November 2021 in anticipation of pent-up demand for holiday travel. The mammoth aircraft is the only jet in the company’s fleet that offers both first and business-class seating. It also features a walk-up bar for premium customers.

Singapore Airlines

After having restored the Los Angeles to Tokyo route earlier this year, Singapore Airlines just announced the addition of its New York to Frankfurt flight path, welcome news to those looking to enjoy transatlantic travel in their own mini-hotel room. The company’s posh first-class suites include ultra-long 6-foot 10-inch beds, with two flatscreens and a small chair and desk on the side. The suite can be full enclosed when the door slides shut.

Virgin Atlantic

The first-class unit on Virgin’s soon-to-be-released “leisure fleet” of Airbus 350-1000 planes will include a new social space called “The Booth,” an intimate lounge-style seating for two with a small single leaf table in the middle. The London-based company’s traditional A350 airliners already include a larger lounge facility named “The Loft,” which itself boasts several booths and a large screen for entertainment.

Now that so many first-class routes are back in action, the only question for those ready to fly in style is “where to?”

The post As International Air Travel Resumes, the First-Class Experience Gets an Update first appeared on Dornob.

Since the movie is about a scientist who can help people relive their pasts, after uploading a photo of yourself on this website, the AI-driven tech animates your mugshot and guides you through the process of revisiting the past, seeing yourself smile, move, and blink in a pretty convincing manner.

“It’s a new kind of experience,” said D-ID CEO and co-founder Gil Perry in an interview with Fast Company of the eerie personalized trailers. “The audience can engage and kind of feel the emotions of being inside the experience, the movie.”

At the end of the video, the website gives you option to buy tickets to the real movie in theaters or share your clip on social media. This kind of individualized marketing strategy is quickly gaining traction as it’s proven to lead to greater audience engagement and more movie theater foot traffic. In fact, Perry says his company is already working with other studios to create similar marketing promos.

D-ID, founded in 2017 by Perry, COO Sella Blondheim, and CTO Eliran Kuta, started as a privacy protection service, giving businesses the ability to “de-identify” photos, removing any “sensitive biometric data and personally identifiable information from facial images.” To the naked eye, the photos look the same, but a computer would be unable to decrypt or reverse-engineer it, thereby providing anti-hacking protection.

The Tel Aviv-based company made waves back in February when it partnered with genealogy website MyHeritage to let customers bring pictures of their deceased ancestors to life. “We’re basically transforming all the photos in the world to videos – we like to say we ‘Harry Potter-ize’ the world.”

The photo/videos are disconcertingly realistic. D-ID has worked tirelessly to achieve this effect with all different types of images. “The hard part is when you have no different angles – for example, you can upload a photo which is very frontal and without teeth,” Perry said in a piece for Tech Radar. “Our algorithms know how to predict and create the missing parts that you didn’t have in the photo – for example, ears, teeth, the background. Basically, we cross what people call the uncanny valley.”

Perry believes there are ample possibilities for his company’s deepfake capabilities, especially in the entertainment field. Most notably, it allows movie directors to play around with stunts and special effects before even casting the actors. “We can animate and bring to life things that are not real humans, but animals, cartoons, paintings,” he explains, adding that “it really helps save money for pre-production, when filmmakers are not really sure what the movie is going to look like.”

Currently, D-ID is in talks with stock photo companies, a place where customers might want the ability to change the expressions or angles of the models for their own needs.

“What we offer companies or businesses is the ability to create meaningful, creative reality experiences,” Perry says. “We give them the tools to do things they couldn’t do before — creative things that can engage an audience.”

The post This AI Startup can Deepfake You into a Hollywood Movie first appeared on Dornob.

Although half of the furnishings will eventually be turned into physical copies, the other half exist only in the eyes of the beholder. Crafted by Argentinian graphic artist Andrés Reisinger, the imaginary tables and chairs (offered through online marketplace Nifty Gateway in mid-February 2021) were conceived for the online gamer clientele. The bulbous and sometimes undulating pieces can be inserted into any shared 3D virtual or augmented-reality space, like Minecraft or Decentraland. They can also be used in game development platforms such as Unity or Unreal Engine for animations and CGI movies.

“It is a very ambitious project,” Reisinger says in a Dezeen article. “I am the first to do it and I hope that it opens the doors to many other artists and designers. This is a new way, a complementary way to continue growing our careers and businesses.”

The authenticity of each virtual object is verified with a non-fungible token (NFT), which allows ownership to be individually identified on a blockchain, much the same way Bitcoins are traced. This encryption prevents forgeries and replications, giving buyers the ability to resell the items as desired.

“Ownership of these tokens is immutable, which means gamers and collectors can actually possess their NFTs rather than the companies that created them,” says Reisinger. “If you buy a song on iTunes, on the other hand, you don’t actually own what you’re buying. You just purchase the license to listen to the music.”

“For artists, being able to sell artwork in digital form directly to a global audience of buyers without using an auction house or gallery allows them to keep a significantly greater portion of the profits they make from sales,” he adds. “Royalties can also be programmed into digital artwork so that the creator receives a percentage of sale profits each time their artwork is sold to a new owner.”

Reisinger became an Instagram sensation in 2018 when he released online renderings of the Hortensia chair, a plush seat covered in over 20,000 pink hydrangea-like petals. The image was so popular that fans begged him to create a “real” version and he obliged. After going on display in the Barcelona Montoya Gallery, it has since been acquired by the Belgium’s Design Museum of Ghent.

He will again be bringing his furniture to life with this auction of the five physically promised pieces. Those include the geometrical Matsumoto Bench, the sphere-base Time Table, the layered ABBA office chair, and the Ekstrem-inspired Tangled Chair.

Selling for the most ($67,777) of any of the collection, the fifth item is a yet-to-be-conceptualized custom piece that will be created in cooperation with the buyer. Among the digital-only “impossible objects” sold were the Hortensia chair, the Complicated Sofa (a couch made of a deflated silver parachute), the Complicated Drawer (a jumble of drawers sliding around on chrome tubes), the Pink Table (reminiscent of a balloon animal), and the Deep Space sofa, which boasts an expanding and quivering midsection.

Reisigner expects this form of virtual furniture art to only increase in demand. While “we are not escaping from the material world anytime soon,” he explains, “… I believe we are expanding our experience into a new hybrid era of extended reality, in which art and culture are freed from spatial and temporal constraints and the rules of experience are rewritten.”

It’s time to “call into question where the imagined ends and the real begins,” he continues. “It’s no longer necessary to touch something to be touched by it.”

The post Buyers Pay $450,000 for Andrés Reisinger’s “Impossible” Digital Furniture first appeared on Dornob.

A TV documentary show I Met You recently used VR to digitally recreate the late wife of Kim Jung-soo, a 51-year-old father of five, four years after her passing.

Declaring that his biggest desire was to see “even just a shadow” of his wife one more time, Kim had to first overcome opposition from some of his children. His oldest daughter Jong-bin felt that a reunion would only delay her father’s grieving period. Eventually, she relented.

“It is my last wish” he says, with his daughter adding that “that’s why we decided to allow him to meet Mom again.”

Kim’s other daughter Jong-yun was swayed because of his deep love for her mother. “He would kiss her from time to time when working, when eating, or when watching TV. Even when my mother was sick and lost her hair, my father would say that she was pretty and carried her around,” she recalls.

Kim was also eager to show his youngest children a “live” version of their mother, as she passed away when they were still too little to have any concrete memories of her. Kim’s wife Ji-hye died after years of battling a serious illness.

I Met You, produced by Korean broadcast company MBC, took six months to prepare all the VR tech, using video footage to recreate Ji-hye’s movements and photos to match a digital face and body to her likeness. An actress was brought into meld her own voice with Ji-hye’s reconstructed one to make it sound more lifelike.

The digital reunion began as Kim geared up in his VR headset and entered the green screen room. In his VR view, the setting transformed into the home of memories where they began their family. During the tearful meeting, Kim first asks his virtual wife, “Are you not in pain anymore?” He weeps as he holds her hands and they dance. They walk through a garden together as he gets a final chance for closure.

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“Even though I can’t hear you and I don’t see you, I know you’ve always been next to me and the kids,” he tells her, adding that “the kids are doing so well now, so you can relax…don’t worry too much about us” and “I will tell you how the kids are living one by one when the time comes and I go up [to join you].”

Kim’s children, who were able to watch the interaction between their parents from a different room, also got emotional.

The ability to virtually restore a deceased love one on the show has been met with both praise and criticism. Some claim the reunion can be healing for those who have experienced loss, while others believe it allows people to stay stuck in their grief, never properly moving on.

This is not the first time I Met You has used VR to reconnect family members separated by death. In the first season, mother Jang Ji-sung was reunited with her seven-year-old daughter Naveon, who had passed away three years earlier from the rare disease hemochromatosis.

The post VR Allows Man One Last Dance with His Late Wife first appeared on Dornob.

Many people find it thrilling to peruse a crisp new IKEA catalog, and now you can shop for Animal Crossing furniture the same way (kind of). IKEA laid out its recreated catalog pages side-by-side with the real thing so you can see just how hard they tried to match everything up. In some cases, they’ve found convincing furniture within the game to stand in for their own, like a red NIKKEBY cabinet, a RONNINGE dining set, the NYBAKAD play kitchen for kids, and the BESTA entertainment stand.

Some pages are shockingly faithful to the real thing, like a children’s KURA bedroom set featuring a bed canopy in a dinosaur print. They even located just the right accessories to match, like blue and gold couch cushions, tropical houseplants, straw hats, desk lamps, and of course, the company’s iconic blue tote bag. On top of that, catalog models get their very own game characters sporting similar outfits and facial expressions.

For other items, the team had to get extra creative. On one page, an in-game dinosaur “fossil” stands in for IKEA’s JATTELIK T-rex stuffed toy, and a tool box replaces a toy box. On another page, a character’s white hair and colorful outfit cleverly take the place of a flowery hanging lamp and throw pillow. All in all, everything looks pretty great, especially considering the fact the designers had to work with objects that already existed in the game. You can check out the whole IKEA Animal Crossing catalog release on IKEA Taiwan’s Facebook page.

If only shopping for furniture in Animal Crossing was really as simple as perusing an IKEA catalog, huh? The actual process can be a little more frustrating, and Nintendo would do well to take notes for future updates. Currently, players have to upgrade Resident Services by talking to shopkeeper Tom Nook in order to access a catalog of every item they’ve purchased, found, or made in the game. Shops include the Nook Stop terminal, Timmy and Tommy at Nook’s Cranny, the Able Sisters, Kicks and Saharah the wandering camel salesman, and you can also ask for furniture as a reward for certain tasks.

This virtual catalog isn’t an official collaboration between Nintendo and IKEA, and that’s probably a good thing. The real world is so jam-packed full of advertising, it would be a shame if branded items started making their way into gameplay, too. It’s already happened to some degree, with an official KFC island featuring a fully decorated KFC restaurant where characters can get buckets of fried chicken. Hopefully it won’t go much further than that.

Need help sprucing up your virtual home? Read our guide to customizing your Animal Crossing: New Horizons furniture. You can even hire a real live interior designer to do all the hard work for you.

The post Animal Crossing Gets IKEA Makeover in New Catalog first appeared on Dornob.

Cows roaming pastures wearing VR headsets may sound like an offbeat idea for a children’s TV show, but in present-day Russia, it’s very much a reality. Scientists recently began fitting herds with them as part of an experiment sponsored by the Moscow region’s Ministry of Agriculture.

The Reasoning Behind the Research

With research around the world indicating that calm, happy cows yield better milk and beef than those who are stressed out and treated like nothing more than factory products, the RusMoloko farm in Moscow’s Ramensky district took it upon themselves to conduct their own experiments on the matter. Based on reports that some Wagyu farmers who surrounded their cattle with mood lighting reported a higher-quality beef yield, as well as one of a Missouri farmer who insisted his cows produced higher-quality milk when he played music for them, the Ministry issued a public statement explaining the logic behind their decision: “Examples of dairy farms from different countries show that in a calm atmosphere, the quantity, and sometimes the quality, of milk increases markedly.”

The Implementation Process

VR designers and veterinarians joined forces with Russian farmers in Krasnogorsk, a city located just northwest of the Russian capital. There, they brainstormed ways to create an environment they envisioned cows would find soothing and positive. That turned out to be a seemingly endless idyllic summer field covered with a variety of untouched grasses, swaddled in sunshine under a faultless sky of blue. The team modified VR headsets to fit the cows’ heads and accommodate their vision so the image was as clear and steady as possible and then loaded a simulation of the aforementioned scene.

The cows’ attitudes seemed to improve almost immediately, with the researchers emphasizing “reduced anxiety” and “improved moods” among the group. No longer were they subjected to the depressing weather or scant grass that made them grumpy. Instead, the VR images seemed to relax them, which in turn increased their intake of grass, silage, and hay, and perhaps due to better digestion, their production of more — and higher-quality — milk.

A Totally New Concept?

Back in 1908, E.A. Stuart purchased 360 acres of farmland in Washington state to found Carnation Farms. He began a selective breeding program of Holstein cows to increase milk production, which was eventually used worldwide. He also believed happy cows were just as important as healthy ones, making a point to treat all his cows with gentleness and compassion, with no stress or mistreatment. Stuart also maintained that this made them produce more and better milk than their counterparts.

Two years earlier, in a 1906 marketing meeting, Stuart was explaining how his pampered cows were so productive. A woman at the firm casually mentioned that “they must be very contented cows.” In 1907, that comment inspired what would become one of the most iconic taglines in food history: “Carnation Condensed Milk, the milk from contented cows.”

The jury’s still out on whether the VR masks significantly increase milk production and/or quality. If you see herds of milk cows wearing headsets on your next drive through the countryside, you’ll know the experiment was a success.

The post Russian Cows Fitted with VR Headsets to Reduce Anxiety and Produce More Milk first appeared on Dornob.

Called Everyday Experiments, the new site is dedicated to exploring fun innovations in the world of interior design. As a result of recent events like the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, most people are finding themselves at home much more often than before, leaving many to contemplate different pieces and layouts for their spaces. Everyday Experiments allows you to further that exploration through various media formats.

“The future home should be about the people first. It’s a place for everyone to be safe, to feel comfortable and in control. Technology is quickly becoming a vital part of the IKEA customer experience and home furnishing offer. Being a values-driven brand, we focus on people and planet. As we enter a new digital era, we are also exploring new ways to create a better everyday life at home while protecting people’s privacy,” explains Fredrik Axén, Digital Manager of IKEA’s Core Business Franchise.

The experiments featured on the site revolve around different themes including design, perception, control, capture, and play. Some of the technologies incorporated into these projects include Spatial Intelligence, VR, occlusion, and GAN (edge computing). That all might sound very technical, but their purpose is actually to simplify tech-heavy designs for the average homeowner to use.

The website guides the user through a catalog of options. For example, you can establish how many elephants will fit into a space through Extreme Measures, a friendly and thoughtful program made to help you gauge dimensions and volume. Using another program called Fort Builder, users can import everyday items from their homes and stack them into a fort, all without concern for foundation or support. The application then allows the user to knock the items down again — a simple virtual pleasure that won’t result in breakage, danger, or mom’s anger.

Home Applications is another experiment that really lets the creative juices flow. Use it to teach your curtains to automatically open and close with the sun, or train a light bulb to measure pollutants in the air. Optical Sound System is an augmented reality experiment that allows the user to “see” sound waves as they travel through a space. And speaking of space, Spatial Instruments is a technical prototype that allows you to determine the sound a room would make if in fact a room could speak. This is accomplished by scanning and building your living room digitally. As the camera moves through it, the sounds change as they rebound off small or large items, changing again as you start to rearrange things.

SPACE10’s Creative Director Bas Van de Pol adds that “home — especially these days — plays an important role in how we develop our everyday interactions and relationships. It is not only the place where we live but the place where we work, teach our children, and where we connect with the world digitally. We believe that the more we learn about the next curve of design and technological innovations, the more we can help people to make tomorrow’s life at home, and with each other, even better.

The post IKEA and SPACE10 Launch Website to Rethink Interior Design first appeared on Dornob.

With a highly contagious pandemic to worry about, it’s easy for many people to forget about other pressing issues, not the least of which is the environment. Eliasson’s app, Acute Art, makes his collection of 10 digitally rendered sculptures called “WUNDERKAMMER” available for free. Among them are a boiling sun, a rain cloud, and the Aurora Borealis northern lights.

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“This artwork is about challenging our perception of the everyday and actively welcoming that which lies on the boundary between the known and the unknown,” Eliasson says in a statement. “It’s about creating spaces that meld the everyday and the extraordinary — spaces that evoke vivid perceptions and embodied engagement.”

Available via the Apple App Store and Google Play, the app allows you to discover, experience, and collect augmented reality artworks like WUNDERKAMMER and more. Use the app to virtually place the artwork around your home, adjust the shadow angle and light intensity to match the light in your space, or switch on the app’s “night mode” torch to light up the artwork at night. Then capture it in a photo or video to share it on social media.

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In a video released with the app, Eliasson demonstrates how it works, showing how you can physically move around the room while holding your phone up to see the artworks from different angles. It’s an interesting new way to make works by some of the world’s most sought-after artists accessible to anyone with a smartphone.

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Eight augmented reality works by American artist KAWS are also included with the Acute Art app, so you can see what your house looks like decorated with the artist’s massive murals or iconic giant inflatable sculptures.

“Now we are spending a lot of time indoors, so I thought, okay, let’s make a work of art which takes the outside inside,” Eliasson explains in the video. “Even though we can’t go out as much as we want to, it’s so important to kind of not forget that, once all of this is over, we have to look at our environment, we have to look at what is going on with regards to the things we care about so much.”

Raised in Iceland and Denmark, Eliasson graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts before moving to Berlin and founding Studio Olafur Eliasson, which is now comprised of a large team of architects, craftspeople, archivists, researchers, art historians, and more. His art is “driven by his interests in perception, movement, embodied experience, and feelings of self” as he strives to create projects that highlight global concerns like climate change.

A thread of sustainability and connection to nature runs through much of his work, which continues here as WUNDERKAMMER presents themes of essential elements for life on Earth and the simultaneous destruction they can unleash.

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Luckily, there’s a new way to fully immerse yourself in entertainment without bothering anyone around you. The GOOVIS Young is a “personal mobile cinema” headset compatible with common devices like the iPhone, Android, PS4, and Xbox, featuring twin 1920 x 1080 M-OLED goggle displays. The result is comparable to an 800-inch screen viewed from 66 feet away. You can even ditch your glasses or contacts with the built-in diopter adjustment, setting the display to accommodate your eyesight with an accuracy of plus or minus 0.33 degrees.

Recently wrapping up a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, the GOOVIS Young claims its pixel-per-degree (a way to measure sharpness) is four times sharper than other VR headsets, producing the equivalent of one top-of-the-line SONY OLED television for each eye.

The large-angle flip lets you pause your virtual experience to check in with your real surroundings without taking the headset off, and anti-fog ventilation keeps the screens clear at all times. On top of that, there’s no charging required. Just use the included cable (or a video adapter for HDMI) to connect to your device (it remains to be seen how well this feature will actually work with large electronics like televisions and gaming systems).

Using it to watch movies and television is obvious, but the company notes that you can also use it to view anything else you’d normally do on your devices, like performing painstakingly detailed work in Photoshop, browsing the internet, or playing games. One of the GOOVIS’ coolest capabilities might be its drone connectivity, which allows you to fly a drone and look through its cameras in real time, giving you a bird’s eye view of the area around you while remaining firmly on the ground.

It’s easy to imagine scenarios in which a headset like this would be really helpful, not the least of which is enjoying a little Netflix in bed after your partner has fallen asleep. Its release also just happens to coincide with a time of unexpected social distancing, and the company notes that it could be helpful for living in small spaces with people who want to do different activities at the same time.

Devices like the GOOVIS Young might also be a sort of entry-level way to get into virtual reality tech, which, thus far, has been slow to enter mainstream popularity. There’s been a lot of musing over the last couple years about why VR has failed to catch on, resulting in companies like Google shuttering their VR projects. Maybe it’s for the same reason people didn’t like Google Glass: the headsets are conspicuous and nerdy, and the technology might strike some as potentially invasive.

Simple devices like this headset demonstrate the versatility of the technology. You don’t have to become a digital shut-in to enjoy it, and its conveniences are worthy of consideration even by people who don’t consider themselves huge techies and gamers. The GOOVIS Young is currently available for pre-order via Indiegogo.

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Since April 2nd, a partnership between the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and the Unity Temple Restoration Foundation has provided weekly tours of the architect’s buildings. This program was originally scheduled to last just six weeks, though it has since been extended until at least July 15th. In case you’re coming in late, the tours are archived for later viewing. You can find them with #WrightVirtualVisit on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, or by accessing links on this Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy page.

The idea to offer virtual tours is a result of the current COVID-19 pandemic, which for months now has had most of the world in quarantine. As we adjust to things like working from home and homeschooling our children, the tours offer a great substitute to visiting in person.

The conservancy explains that “as social distancing and stay-at-home orders have swept the country, many Frank Lloyd Wright sites that are normally open to the public have had to close their doors, just when they were gearing up for the spring touring season to begin. It is precisely at this time, when so many are shut inside, that we need to experience beauty and inspiration. Wright’s works bring people together in harmony with the natural world, reminding us that we are all connected, even when we’re apart.”

Most of the videos are brief, offering a sampling rather than a comprehensive tour. For example, “Moments of Fallingwater” is a one minute excerpt of that home’s outdoor area. Another video of Fallingwater offers a two-minute discussion regarding the outdoor architectural design. But hey, considering the fact that these buildings can only afford regular upkeep and maintenance by donations and admission fees, it sort of makes sense that the conservancy would only want to pique people’s interest.

Using this time of social distancing to bring audiences together virtually serves to educate old and new generations about the history of Frank Lloyd Wright architecture: an art form so impactful that eight of his buildings were recently registered on the UNESCO World Heritage List, an elite catalogue of the planet’s most exceptional and irreplaceable cultural and natural sites. Although there are more than 1,000 World Heritage sites around the world, there are only 24 sites in the United States. Wright’s eight buildings are the only examples of modern architecture anywhere in the country on the prestigious list.

The post Iconic Frank Lloyd Wright Homes Now Offering Virtual Tours first appeared on Dornob.

Luckily, we’ve spent the last couple decades creating a virtual environment in which ideas can blossom and proliferate. After all, there’s no shortage of forward-thinking concepts that can help us move beyond polluting and exploitative industries — it’s just a matter of convincing the public they’re worth the investment. At the same time, we have to be careful not to introduce even bigger problems into the mix with our solutions.

A recent exhibition at Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum provides one example of how we could make that happen. “Future and the Arts: AI, Robotics, Cities, Life — How Humanity Will Live Tomorrow” is a collaborative project bringing together dozens of architects, designers, artists, scientists, and engineers to envision how technology will help us evolve as a species in the decades to come.

The museum’s online description for the project explains that “advances in technology over the past few years are now starting to have a significant impact on various aspects of our lives. It is said that not too far in the future, human beings will be entrusting many of their decisions to AI (artificial intelligence) which will then supersede human intelligence; the advent of ‘singularity’ will potentially usher in enormous changes to our society and lifestyles. Another development, that of blockchain technology, looks set to build new levels of trust and value into our social systems, while advances in biotechnology will have a major impact on food, medicine, and the environment.”

“It is also possible that one day, we humans will be able to extend our physical functions and enjoy longer lifespans. The effect of such changes may not be necessarily and universally positive, yet surely we need to at least acquire a vision of what life may look like in the next 20 to 30 years, and ponder the possibilities of that new world. Doing so will also spark fundamental questions about the nature of affluence and of being human, and what constitutes life.”

The exhibition showcases over 100 projects aiming to encourage us to contemplate “cities, environmental issues, human lifestyles, and the likely fate of human beings as well as human society — all in the imminent future, via cutting-edge developments in science and technology including AI, biotechnology, robotics, and AR (augmented reality), plus art, design, and architecture influenced by these.”

The projects are presented in five sections: “New Possibilities of Cities,” “Toward Neo-Metabolism Architecture,” “Lifestyle and Design Innovations,” “Human Augmentation and Its Ethical Issues,” and “Society and Humans in Transformation.”

Some of them will look familiar, like ecoLogicStudio’s “H.O.R.T.U.S. XL Astaxanthin.g,” which depicts an amorphous 3D-printed structure growing highly nutritious algae for food. Others explore the potential repercussions of increasing the use of artificial intelligence in our society and everyday lives, like Patrick Tresset’s “Human Study #1,” in which robots draw portraits of human subjects, leading us to ponder the definition and value of art as a unique form of human expression.

“Oceanix City” by the Bjarke Ingels Group envisions a city of floating artificial islands for a future in which the impacts of rising seas can no longer be avoided. “Internal Collection” by Amy Karle takes a lighter tone by looking at how technology will change fashion, enabling garments that are more intricate than ever.

What kind of impact will trends like robotic pets, lab-grown flesh, and increasingly realistic virtual reality have on our societies, our relationships to each other, and our general regard for nature and life? Is it possible that our current trajectory of wealth stratification will lead to literally stratified cities in which playgrounds for the rich are elevated into the sun, creating dystopian shadow cities beneath them, as seen in Aida Makoto’s “Neo Dejima”?

Unfortunately, the exhibition closed to the public on March 29th, but the projects can still be viewed online, and they’re certainly worth examining and considering while you’re staying at home.

The post “Future and the Arts” Exhibition Imagines How We’ll Live Tomorrow first appeared on Dornob.

Unsurprisingly, Art Basel Hong Kong and its satellite fair Art Central were canceled this month, leaving a lot of artists and gallerists worried about lost sales and opportunities. To temper those worries, the fair has debuted a brand new feature: online viewing rooms.

About 90 percent of exhibitors have opted to take part in a special digital exhibition, displaying more than 2,000 works worth $270 million USD entirely on the internet, with many dealers opening their own digital galleries full of additional works. You can search the archive by gallery, artist, and medium to navigate each collection, and you can even make an offer to buy many of the pieces, if you feel so inclined.

The experience of entering each virtual “room” allows you to browse different works by each artist as if they’re being displayed on a gallery wall. Different themed collections include “minimal avant-garde,” “abstractions,” “material and form in contemporary art,” “forward in time,” and “mythical spaces: nature and urban.” Users can click on individual images to see them up close.

“As the art market continues to evolve, Art Basel has continually investigated how new technologies can give us new opportunities to support our galleries,” says Marc Spiegler, Global Director of Art Basel. “The Online Viewing Rooms will provide galleries with a further possibility for engaging with our global audiences, complementing the essential personal interactions that continue to underlie the art market.”

“We are delighted to be able to premiere this new initiative now,” says Adeline Ooi, Director Asia of Art Basel. “While the Online Viewing Rooms cannot replace our 2020 fair in Hong Kong, we firmly hope that it will provide a strong support to all the galleries who were affected by the cancellation of our March show.”

So far, dealers are reporting mixed success, but many have chosen to withhold their most expensive works for now. Some are doing just fine, selling works like Jenny Holzer’s XX 8 for $350,000. Another work by Paul McCarthy reportedly sold to a buyer quarantined in France after testing positive for the virus.

“More importantly, it’s a platform that is keeping us connected to the art community,” says dealer Thaddeus Ropac.

Founded in 1970 by gallerists from Basel, Switzerland, Art Basel is one of the world’s most anticipated art events. It remains to be seen whether upcoming Art Basel shows like the June 18th-21st fair in Basel itself — or even the December 3rd-6th event in Miami — will still occur.

Regardless of how this year plays out as the coronavirus situation continues to evolve, it’ll be interesting to see how various industries (including art) adopt new technologies in response. For instance, Art Basel organizers are already planning to continue the new digital initiative for future events, but they’ll run parallel to the shows, rather than replacing the physical experience of an art fair.

The post Art Basel to Offer Digital Exhibits You Can Enjoy While You Stay at Home first appeared on Dornob.