medium was created alongside the Atomic Pixels series. While other works within the series witness the transformation that occurs when individual units of data or data formats are “broken” through the process of reinterpretation into different mediums, medium explores the world-breaking potential of the medium itself in context, i.e., of the digital work of art exhibited virtually. medium is exhibited at the largest scale possible within the physical limits of the unmodified virtual reality gallery room. In contrast to the other works in the series, which are exhibited like paintings lining the walls of a small gallery, medium’s presentation recalls that of large-scale works of installation art—works which typically require massive amounts of planning, engineering, and capital to construct and display on location. By enlarging the work, the artist exposes the malleability of the digital work of art and the transformation implicit in virtual modes of viewing. Without the physical restraints of a tangible medium, there are potentially endless ways in which digital materiality can be realized.
medium’s galactic forms exaggerate the distortion inherent in our experience of digital spatiality. Like a magic eye illusion, its swirling and waving patterns appear to shift across dimensions, moving with the viewer as the viewer orients themselves around the work of art. Here, the experience of getting lost in an illusionistic image is no longer a trick of the eye but a real alteration of how we navigate space and physicality in virtual settings. The artwork inhabits a liminal space between the gallery and the matrix that lies beyond the viewer’s visual perception of the room itself. In doing so, it acts as a medium between two experiences of virtual place.
In medium, the artist alters only the work of art within the defined limits of the virtual gallery and yet still breaks the boundaries of what is “real” in its virtual construction. What is the future of digital art in increasingly digital modes of exhibition? How do our interactions with visual mediums change when we are displaced from the limits of physical reality?
