Titled ‘Collaboration’, the project features two teams; visual artist James Jean + Australian Ballet dancer Sharni Spencer; & architect Kelvin Ho + typographer Luke Lucas – who collaborated on two virtual reality artworks. The two teams first learnt about the technology and the creative process, culminating in a live experience at the Semi Permanent Sydney. Both teams worked about 6 hours to create the final VR artworks. The works (and the supporting films and event experience) illustrated how the room scale 3D painting VR software can evolve the design process, in the development of new ideas and harnessing varied skill sets.

We created a piece that worked across a live experiential performance, event, VR 360 and documentary film. Shooting took place across five key days with our talent and crew, using HTC Vive equipment and the Google Tilt Brush software. After viewing our 2-min documentary, please watch the virtual reality experience ‘Collaboration’ in the headset provided. It allows the viewer to hear some of the collaborators’ processes, and experience both virtual reality artworks inside the correct ‘canvas’. Semi Permanent Sydney was attended by approx. 6,800 attendees over the 3 day event. The dates of the event were May 25-27, 2017. The Collaboration films were released online on the 4th September, 2017.

The film has had to date approx. 92,000 Facebook views (50% higher than Semi Permanent’s Facebook community’s size of just under 60k), and has also had 2545 documentary film and 2179 VR 360 film YouTube views and 1,441 Veer.TV Views. It was a significant impact focused on early adopters in what is a niche and boutique size Australian design industry.