KAWS, Olafur Eliasson to Guest Present in New AR/VR Course
The five-day course is offered by the Royal College of Art in collaboration with Acute Art.
KAWS, COMPANION (EXPANDED) in London (2020). Augmented reality. Courtesy KAWS and Acute Art.
A new summer course, Present Futures: Virtual and Augmented Reality and AI in Art, commences on 28 August at the Royal College of Art in London.
The course is a collaboration between the RCA and Acute Art, a virtual and augmented reality production company led by curator Daniel Birnbaum.
Pop artist KAWS and immersive installation artist Olafur Eliasson are among the guest presenters in the five-day programme that includes talks, practical exercises, and collaborative workshops.
Both artists have expanded their practices to incorporate VR and AR technologies in recent years. In 2022, KAWS collaborated with Acute Art to recreate his Serpentine show, New Fiction, in the popular online video game Fortnite.
'For me one of the really unique and exciting elements of the programme will be access to the world's most important artists working in and around these technologies,' said John Slyce, course co-leader and senior tutor at RCA's School of Humanities.
Students will also hear from British artist duo Gilbert & George and Serpentine Galleries' artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist, among specialists and leaders in technology, media, and art.
The programme explores VR, AR, and AI from artistic, curatorial, and technological points of view. Daniel Birnbaum said that the course would 'offer tools to navigate the art world of tomorrow.'
Sessions will prompt considerations of the technologies' impacts on contemporary art and institutions, art fairs and biennials, and ecology among other topics.
Early bird registrations are open until 16 July. —[O]
