A team from Art-A-Hack™ Summer 2016

Team members:

  • Samuel Arsenault-Brassard
  • Ace Ji
  • Madhu Sivaramakrishnan
  • Marie Patterson
  • Rachel Stevens

During Art-A-Hack 2016, the Metaverse Art Gallery team created an art curation platform to be used by visitors around the world.

The concept of ‘metaverse’ refers to collective virtual shared space on the internet. The VR platform used by the team in this project, AltSpaceVR, is one of a number of platforms which aim to bring the abstract metaverse idea to life.

A Unity 3D sketch of the curation platform
A working prototype in AltSpaceVR

The team’s goal was to allow artists, galleries, and curators to import 3D art into the metaverse without requiring technical skills. This would allow the metaverse to be used for speculative art shows in virtual-reality spaces.

The team initially created a minimalist Unity 3D sketch of the user interface, illustrated above, allowing placement of 3D artworks in VR. Along with this they designed a website, which could be used to manage and explore 3D art, artists, art shows and digital galleries.

The website design for managing virtual assets
The website design for managing virtual assets

Working from Unity 3D sketches, developers on the team created a basic prototype that focused on essential features. It is now ready to be extended and expanded for the next future iteration.

Challenges the team faced included learning the AltSpaceVR development platform, as well as three.js in a constrained timeframe. Another challenge was making the VR user interface as simple as possible, while maintaining all the management capabilities on the website.

A working prototype in AltSpaceVR<
A Unity 3D sketch of the curation platform

The prototype was displayed to visitors at the Final Presentations in July 2016. It is a work-in-progress whose final outcome is to create a platform accessible to artists, curators and galleries.

The team's presentation at the 2016 showcase

As of August 2016 the project is being supported by the AltSpaceVR Developer Initiative. The grant will allow team lead Samuel Arsenault-­Brassard to work alongside a developer towards the project, now titled “Cultvr.Space”. Progress and updates will be available on the project’s new site.