The Big Crash VR at KP22 exhibition Aarhus

Till the 8. May 2022 Malte Steiners The Big Crash VR in the Mozilla Hubs version is part of the digital section of the KP22 exhibition Aarhus, Denmark:

https://www.kp-digital.online

No The Big Crash VR at Rencontres Internationales this year

Unfortunately the showing of The Big Crash VR at the Rencontres Internationales event at Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt in Berlin which opens tonight, wont happen. The organisers dropped the whole VR program and postponed it to 2022, a wise decision which I support. Putting a VR headset on random peoples faces is not a good idea in a pandemic, especially with all the hideous mutations. 

Thats why I decided also to not show it in The Big Crash exhibition at XM3 in Aalborg, safety for the audience first!
For home consumption you can still check out the multiuser version on Mozilla Hubs which works in the browser on desktop or all VR headsets.

https://hubs.mozilla.com/ufU2mgo/the-big-crash

The Big Crash VR at ICMC2021

The Mozilla Hubs version of The Big Crash VR is featured in the XR Music section of this years International Computer Music Conference ICMC 2021. Of course you can visit it anytime at

https://hubs.mozilla.com/ufU2mgo/the-big-crash

Piksel in Bergen exhibition till 9 December and Mozilla Hubs

The Price Of Berlin can be seen till the 9. December at the Piksel exhibition on location at Studio 207 in Bergen, Norway. The Mozilla Hubs version of The Big Crash VR can be experienced at https://hubs.mozilla.com/ufU2mgo/the-big-crash within a browser on desktop, mobile or VR headset.

See also http://www.thebigcrash.net

The Big Crash at Piksel20

Tonight 18:00 Piksel20 festival opens in Bergen, Norway, and online. I contributed with parts from my The Big Crash, art for the pending burst of the real estate bubble project (http://www.thebigcrash.net): the installation The Price Of Berlin at the exhibition on location and The Big Crash VR as multiuser version in Mozilla Hubs at Piksel Cyber Salon. I will be online in Hubs:

https://20.piksel.no

Lightning talk on 3D Engines in Steiners art

My lightning talk from this years AMRO conference, among others, about my usage of 3D Engines in my art, from humble beginnings with VRML in the 90s via custom OpenGL software to Unity and Godot. Plus a bit discussion on current state of media art.
https://dorftv.at/video/33557

What I learned from one month usage of GODOT 3D Engine

What I learned from one month usage of GODOT 3D Engine

I finished an artpiece in GODOT for an online exhibition and I am really happy with it. The exhibition opened yesterday as a part of the AMRO (Art Meets Radical Openness) festival in Linz and you can check it out here or if you can't be bothered walking through the adventure like interface, its directly here:

https://block4.com/vr/price/price.html

 being part of my artproject The Big Crash, art for the pending burst of the real estate bubble. Tomorrow morning I give a lightning talk at AMRO about the usage of 3D engines in my art and GODOT is a central part of it.

But some points I found out:

- lightbaking didn't work for me, all kind of weired artifacts occured. A great rewrite of the lightbaking is underway and to be expected for version 4. I baked in Blender so it was no problem for me

- never ever use OGG Vorbis for short sounds which programmatically got exchanged in one player. I attached 2 sounds to one player node via the animation timeline and all kind of nasty pops and static occured at full volume. This is a absolute showstopper, it can damage speakers and hearing. It seems to be known so hopefully a fix is on the way. Workaround is to use WAV files for short sounds. Anyhow, OGG Vorbis sounds for longer looping background noises works perfectly, its only when they get exchanged in one player some buffers seems not cleared correctly.

- HTML5 export on Safari seems to miss the shadowmaps. Other browsers are fine. Also the crosssite tracking issue occurs only in Safari, when a Godot project is referenced in an IFrame on another server. That can't be fixed I guess.

- HTML5 export on IOS has the audio crackling and stuttering, in all browsers. Someone found a solution and posted a different WASM file which fixes it, its again a buffer setting issue, guess it will be fixed soon.

- Couldn't get WEBVR / WEBXR to work, hope it would be soon fully supported, would be great for drive-by VR worlds. Not everyone is capable to install an application on his or her VR device.

AMRO20 Linz

Tomorrow opens AMRO20 (Art Meets Radical Openness) in Linz, this time as online version. All talks are streamed, exhibition is online etc. I contributed The Price Of Berlin to the exhibition and have a lightning talk on Friday 11:00 on Open Source 3D Engines.

https://gateway.radical-openness.org

AMRO Linz 2020

The next outing of my art project

The Big Crash, art for the pending burst of the real estate bubble

will be at the Art Meets Radical Openness 2020 festival in Linz, Austria later this May. I was invited to show The Price Of Berlin at the exhibition but history took another turn, so instead physical on location I prepare something for the online edition. I do miss the traveling but apart from that not much changed for me.

Detail of The Price Of Berlin, as shown at the exhibition at Spanien19C Aarhus this year, just before the lockdown.

The Big Crash

I worked in the last months on my new art project The Big Crash dealing with the instability and pending burst of the big bubble of the Real Estate market. It encompasses art pieces like VR, paintings and sculptures for exhibition and electronic music made with the data.

The electroacoustic 'Piece For Modular Synthesizer And Real Estate Data' I will perform with my project Elektronengehirn the first time at Experimentik Berlin 18.September 2019.


Read more at

https://www.block4.com/art/theBigCrash.php

The Building Blocks Of The Big Crash

Exhibition Ii, Finland

Still going on is our exhibition in Ii, Finland. Open 13:00 to 18:00, on weekends 11:00 till 15:00, till the 29. May.
Besides our videoinstallation you can see Tina Madsens Bio Art piece working with DIY natural indicators. I worked on the topic of history of Iijoki and added some drawings about working conditions, life and how it changed. Additional performance instructions and drawings by Tina. A bit invisible is a virtual work where I reflect about the stories of Iijoki in a surreal way, that VR can be viewed with mobile devices like smart phones and tablets, using the device orientation to look around. The link is

http://block4.com/vr/Iijoki/ii.html

On IOS devices tab on the screen after the VR is loaded to hear the sounds. Don't forget to close the tab when you are done so its not wasting your battery in the background.

for exhibition see
https://artii.fi/artists/tina-mariane-krogh-madsen-dk-malte-steiner-de-pintajannitys-iijoki-suhteet/

picture from the opening by Riitta Räinä:

vr back

Being artist-in-residency in Ii gave me time to finish an online VR piece for my music project Notstandskomitee, done with WebGL and compatible with modern browsers but preferable to watch on mobile devices like phones and tablets/pads because the device orientation does control the point of view. On IOS devices tab on the world after it loaded to hear the sound. And close the browser tab after you are done so the battery is not drained in the background:

http://www.block4.com/vr

My tradition with VR goes back to the 90s, when VRML was about the next big thing after WWW and HTML, which unfortunately never happened. After experimenting with online VR worlds and the multiuser system Blaxxun, it became appearent that it was to ahead of its time. I concentrated on working with 3d game engines for live visuals for my music projects or art installations, more on the page linked above. Virtual reality will also a part of our installation at Art Ii biennial.
I am happy to see that HTML5 and WebGL take off where VRML left.