The Price Exhibition VR

This article tells the story of how Virtual Reality was used to plan The Price exhibition and how it was given life after the physical exhibition closed.

Planning

Planning the setup of an art exhibition is a time consuming process that requires the ability to visualise what is not yet there. We had the official floor plans provided by the venue and access to the actual exhibition space. This allowed us to roughly work out positioning of exhibition items. However to fully see how it was going to look and feel we constructed a VR model of the venue.

Building the VR version allowed us to come face to face with artwork and appreciate the scale before we even got the A0 pannels printed. Using what we had learnt in the VR environment allowed us to set up the entire exhibition in under a day. Without already visiting the VR version it would have taken a lot longer.

The Real World

As can be seen, the real world version of the exhibition closely resembled the mocked up VR version.

After the exhibition

Once the physical exhibition was packed away and only a memory we still had our VR mockup. Using the VR application allowed people who could not attend the exhibition to experience it for themselves.

It was also possible to enhance the experience by adding in sounds recorded at the exhibition to give it the ambience of life.

Unfortunately as VR exhibitions have a very niche audience it was not possible to make the experience downloadable via the Oculus store. Due to this limitation the only way to visit the VR version is via demonstrations using our own devices at events.