Throughout the blog posts written and Semester A’s module Practice 1, my research has veered into technology, and eventually ends up there even when unintended. A topic that continuously comes up within technology is the Metaverse. The Metaverse is a colossal subject that could be investigated from many different angles but what is important to me is where do I, as an illustrator, fit into the Metaverse and where will illustration practice be in the future?
First, there must be a basic understanding of the Metaverse to be able to understand where illustration might play a part. The Metaverse is essentially a platform where humans, as avatars, interact with each other in a virtual space. This can be extended to immersion hardware’s such as Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality to enhance the experience. (Kiong, 2021) This definition however is as detailed as it can be as the Metaverse is almost undefinable. It encompasses so many different things such as digital economy, gaming, virtual world and many more, meaning that it is essentially everywhere and yet not entirely complete.
Within virtual worlds there are virtual economies. Digital currency such as Bitcoin has been around for a while but NFT’s have boomed recently. NFT’s (non-fungible tokens) are traded as a digital asset and the most popular versions are art. They are often one-of-a-kind pieces that are digital collector’s items and traded like traditional art. They can only have one owner at a time and can be bought and sold continuously to make profit. (Conti, 2022) Although NFT’s are in high demand it is predicted that they could lose traction due to the lack of user engagement and without a platform to interact with an NFT in a suitable way, people may become tired of them. (Wang, 2022) For illustrators this could become a standard way to sell artwork with the additional bonus of bypassing strict galleries and dealing with the collector directly. Sports NFT’s have gained popularity with people buying GIF’s of important moments like goals scored. This essentially means that you can now own a visual historical moment which could become a fascinating way of selling art. By owning the moment of creation for a piece you can see a side of the artwork that has never been available for purchase before. NFT’s seem inviting with the media showing overnight success earning the artist millions, but in reality, the market could be as hard to find success in as the traditional gallery route. I predict that NFT’s will grow into the illustration industry, but the majority will use them as a side project in their freelance work rather than their main focus. As the Metaverse becomes more accessible to the masses it makes sense that these virtual assets are becoming popular but collecting a non-physical item seems like a difficult investment to make and the sustainability issues surrounding NFT storage is enormous as server farms digitally pollute the planet.
Hardware such as Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality headsets (XR) are a way to access the Metaverse immersively by giving a first-person view into the digital realm. Currently, XR is mainly used for gaming but has great prospects in education. Presently, the Natural History Museum in Paris is offering AR tours of extinct animals, where the creatures appear before you for full investigation. Customers use an AR headset so that they can walk the building unaided whilst a tour guide is played through their headset and animals appear at certain locations. (Chen,2021) An example of VR is being utilized in art galleries which has huge successes during pandemic lockdowns. The V&A museum in London curated a VR Alice in Wonderland experience where the illustrator Kristjana S Williams Created a virtual illustrative story accessible from anywhere. These illustrations were interactive and immersive showing them in a new form. (V&A, 2021) The ability to not only showcase art digitally but have it interact with real-world surroundings and become fully immersive shows great potential for illustrations future. I am currently exploring AR technology in my academic work but as a whole I aim to utilize technology within my artwork going forward. These two examples alone are enough to inspire me to think about my art in new dimensions and provide a fantastic example of what I could achieve. It is interesting to note also that NFT’s are aiming to take away the middle management of galleries and agents, but XR technologies seem to be working for them instead.
Another emerging art trend is that of Transhumanism. This term essentially means a human being that enhances their body with technology. Examples can be seen in Cyberpunk art and early 1990’s manga Ghost in the Shell. The fact that transhumanism has been around for decades and yet is gaining new traction could come from the morals and ideals of the modern world. Transhumanism obliterates gender as the human form can become whatever they want using technologically enhanced body parts. A true question into religion and science comes into play with transhumanism which is an idea that is more widely accepted in Japan and Asia than in Western countries. This is because their belief systems in Buddhism and Shinto already allow for a crossover of belief whereas western religion largely excludes science. Therefore, much of the art and origin stories come from Japan and are only now being accepted by much of the world. (Shalet, 2019) Transhumanism is an interesting topic that will likely continue to trend for the foreseeable future. Due to its transcendence of gender identity coupled with the idea that humans could enhance their bodies with the hardware to access the Metaverse this science fiction becomes an expected reality. At the very least this topic is important for my practice because it joins a discussion about a very possible future which would keep my art current.
With Transhuman art showcasing direct links to the Metaverse, NFT art being sold within the Metaverse and technology readily available to artists to access the Metaverse it seems as though my practice may need to take a leap in the direction of virtual. The Metaverse is being built currently and although it seems impossible to tell how it will eventually end up, one thing is for certain, an illustrator without access to the eventual virtual realm could be left behind. I have often asked the question in this project of where traditional art sits in a digital age and this may be the answer. Traditional art can still sit within the Metaverse in many senses, either uploaded into the space, transcribed digitally and made a part of the space or even by drawing within the Metaverse itself using VR. The research here began as a task to understand the Metaverse better but has ended with extreme amount of inspiration into where I could take my practice next. Augmented Reality is personally favoured as a medium but importantly, what I have discovered whilst writing this blog post is the possibilities of what can be done. AR is my tool, but the Metaverse creates a platform to showcase and sell my artwork. My limitations here are of course, knowledge. Here begins a journey into learning the software’s that can allow me to create artwork for new digital platforms, and to learn a new language of coding so that I might be able to bring my practice into virtual spaces.
Using the image that I created in the previous blog post where I tested a new colour palette, I decided to take the illustration further and develop it for AR. I digitised the drawing on Procreate and added some trees so that I could make some layered elements to view in AR.
Once the image was complete I saved it as a PSD preserving the layers and opened the image into Photoshop. From here I can export directly into Adobe Aero using the creative cloud. On my mobile I imported the image into Aero and scanned a surface for my image. Once placed I was able to play with the position and size but most importantly the z axis of the layers which spread them out from each other. I then viewed the image and added a trigger which scaled it onto my screen.
This AR test was a fantastic success and furthermore, I was excited when it worked. I thoroughly enjoyed making my illustration into AR and I beleive that I drew from my background for this. My first degree was in arts for theatre and film which landed me a career as a model maker. Building illustrations into AR requires thoughts of how layers will work in a 3D plane and essentially sets it up like a model. Using these skills I could develop more complex scenes as my brain already thinks in 3D naturally. What needs refining here is the quality, I feel as though vector images would work best as I have some blur on the image when moving around. Although I have not entered the Metaverse with this image I have explored one of the leading applications used within the Metaverse. My reflections on the project make me excited to work in AR again, which I will be doing in Module: Practice one and perhaps this medium will be something that I adopt within my work to bring me closer to the digital front lines.
Bibliography
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Chloe Cooper | MA Illustration 