Yesterday, Wednesday 9 February 2022, the Workshop on Immersive Narratives and Art History II took place (an activity within the framework of the Master's Degree in Social Developments in Artistic Culture and the Telefónica-UMA 5G Chair in Next Generation Networks and Information Technologies). This workshop, given by Leticia Crespillo Marí (UMA Predoctoral Researcher) and José Gabriel Ruíz Gonzálvez (C.E.O. of Opossum Studios Virtual Builders, Melilla) in the course of the subject «Digital narratives and curatorships».» of the Dr. Nuria Rodríguez Ortega (Professor of Digital Art History and Director of the Department of Art History at the UMA). sought to show students the possibilities offered by virtual reality in the field of art-historical research (from an archaeological, creative or disciplinary transformation point of view) by posing new research questions and answers in the field of the humanities.
After a first explanatory session in which various ways of creating and presenting results, as well as recording or giving content to immersive experiences were discussed, the students were able to try out these prototypes using the glasses. HTC Vive Pro The department regularly works with them to create this type of conceptual and intellectual approaches related to the field of exhibition and/or cataloguing with the aim of transforming them into highly immersive, interactive and participatory three-dimensional visual environments.
Among the results exhibited yesterday was the immersive installation Post-catalogue carried out by the team of iArtHislab together with Opossum Studios Virtual Builders, Melilla (experience designed ad hoc for the exhibition «Catálogos desencadenados» which took place at the Sala de exposiciones del Rectorado de la Universidad de Málaga between December 2020 and January 2021. A project with three clear objectives:
1. First of all, it tries to answering the question of how to make high-dimensional vector spaces intelligible to human cognition associated with computational image processing beyond the usual application of dimensionality reduction algorithms.
2. Secondly, it asks how the constitutive ordering function of catalogues will take shape in a media ecology where the centrality that until recently was occupied by the book artefact will be replaced by a new form of media. is shifting towards new contexts configured by mixed realities (digital and non-digital) that include the subject as an active entity in its ambivalent cognitive-emotional-corporal dimension.
3. Thirdly, and insofar as it allows us to raise complex intellectual issues, this project seeks to to show by means of a concrete example the potential discursive dimension of virtual and immersive reality beyond its use as a recreation, reconstruction or simulation of reality..
Among other experiences, we were able to enjoy Melilla VR (Melilla la Vieja), the Church of the Purísima Concepción de Melilla, the Painting by Curro Leyton «Quijote Magenta».» from which a creative experience in La Mancha and its windmills and Leticia Crespillo's doctoral thesis project, currently in progress and whose prototyping is in the final phase prior to its defence before a tribunal, are derived.
The second session focused on working creatively with the students on a curatorial narrative project that they will carry out as part of the course objectives. The idea is to transform traditional information into an immersive experience of high coherent dimension that is capable of making visible those latent themes that are not directly captured. After all, to give an answer to a research question, to develop, prototype and generate knowledge around it. In this sense, the afternoon was very fruitful in terms of ideas and creative approaches that are translatable into VR. So, after two years without being able to hold a workshop due to the SARS Cov-2 pandemic, we are back with these workshops which, without a doubt, emphasise the training of students in new technologies from the humanities for their future work development in the cultural field in a renewed sense.
