A public showcase of three ground-breaking prototype immersive experiences will be taking place in the Cheng Kar Shun Digital Hub next week
The new works have been created by six of the UK’s most exciting emerging digital artists, supported by leading Oxford University academics, and explore the themes of Dreams, Echoes and Consciousness.
Immersive Assembly Vol 4: ‘Dreams & Echoes’ is the fourth annual talent development programme from international arts commissioner, Mediale – a multi-disciplinary residency focusing on learning, peer critique and developing new ideas and collaborations in and around immersive art and technology.
Since May 2024 the six UK-based artists have been developing prototypes exploring the potential of immersive media in interrogating consciousness and enabling new interpretations of ‘reality’. As part of this process, the programme gave participants the opportunity to explore neuroscience, mental health, access and medical science research expertise, as well as cutting edge AI and ethics research, and globally leading immersive art.
Drawing on the world-leading research of academics at the University of Oxford, the artists have been considering the role that immersive experiences can play in the exploration of what consciousness means now, and what it could mean in the future. The project has been running in collaboration with the University’s Cultural Programme, and the Cheng Kar Shun Digital Hub events programme.
The Immersive Assembly Vol 4 showcase, which takes place on 19th and 20th November in the Digital Hub, includes:
- Prototype: WHEN T-REX DREAMS OF MANGOES AND FIGS
Artists: Chris Tegho & Jazmin Morris. Sound: Louis Jack
Academic: Matthew Parrott, Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy, St Hilda’s College and Associate Professor in Philosophy
Inspired by the Google Chrome Dino game that appears when internet connection is interrupted, this installation explores where consciousness wanders when the machine is in ‘load state’. By reimagining waiting and anticipation in digital spaces, it reflects on how we process uncertainty, meaning and our relationship with machines. The work creates an opportunity for dreams, imagination and creativity in a subtle protest against technologies grasp on our experiences.
- Prototype: TO LIE WITH ANOTHER
Artists: Vicky Clarke & Michelle Collier
Academics: Russell Foster, Professor of Circadian Neuroscience and the Head of Department of Ophthalmology & Vladyslav Vyazovskiy, Professor of Sleep Physiology
Have you ever felt a dream slip into your day, like a shadow you just can’t shake? This multisensory installation takes viewers on a journey through the surrealscape of consciousness, harnessing physical touch, visual projection and sound to create an immersive, interactive and multi-layered ‘reality’. Inspired by the contradictory, often surreal juxtaposition of different states of mind, the work collapses the distance between these layers of perception where boundaries between past and present, waking and dreaming, become permeable.
- Prototype: COLLECTIVE DREAMSCAPE
Artists: Chipo Mapondera & Alysha Nelson
Academic: Patricia Kingori, Professor in Global Health Ethics and Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator
An immersive dreamscape of sound and vision, convening global indigenous stories that challenge colonial constructs of time. This installation creates space for collective dreaming and reimagining, in response to the After The End project which explored post trauma and post crisis echoes in marginalised global communities. Sensory layers created from projection mapping are accompanied by a soundscape blending oral histories, music, and natural sounds from global indigenous communities.
“I love to collaborate with artists,” says Vladyslav Vyazovskiy, Professor of Sleep Physiology, University of Oxford. “Artists and academics have a lot to share about what we study. We are both dealing with the unknown, just from different angles. There is data and then there is interpretation. The very same thing can mean different things to different people depending on how you look at it. So I see great opportunities for sharing learning by working and collaboration with artists”.
Russell Foster, Professor of Circadian Neuroscience and the Head of Department of Ophthalmology, at the University of Oxford says, “Fundamentally, what I’m excited about and trying to understand is how the core mechanisms of sleep and 24-hour circadian rhythms are generated and regulated within the central nervous system, and then to use this information to find ways to improve our quality of life. I believe strongly that working with artists can also help to achieve this vision. We are all, in our different ways, trying to find ways to understand the world we live in. If artists and scientists collaborate, we have a greater chance of achieving this vision.”
Matthew Parrott, Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at St Hilda’s College, Oxford and Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of Oxford says; “Art is an essential medium for helping people think differently about certain topics. My academic background is in philosophy and for many people getting philosophical ideas into other formats, whether that be fiction, literature or poetry, is really important. The particular artists I spoke to for Immersive Assembly are doing a lot to try to get some kind of artistic representation of different kinds of unconscious experiences that people have. For me, that’s great. By only talking to philosophers we can get stuck in a recursive loop. To find ways to get free from that loop, is essential.”
Entrance to the Immersive Assembly Vol 4 showcase is FREE, and tickets can be booked here.