4 reasons to join the RCA and Acute Art’s inimitable Virtual and Augmented Reality summer short course

No doubt today’s immersive technologies – virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) – will change and expand the ways we experience art. Will they even change the definition of art itself, just like photographic methods and mass distribution once altered our understanding of what an artwork can be?

Present Futures: Virtual and Augmented Reality in Art is a five day summer short course designed to introduce participants to the fascinating world of VR and AR. Run in partnership with VR and AR art production company, Acute Art, the course offers unique insights into the impact of these new immersive technologies on contemporary art and its institutions.

The emergence of a medium always gives rise to new possibilities for artists, and each epoch has its key practitioners in whose creations novel encounters between technology and creativity crystalise. 

The course provides unrivalled access to globally recognised artists, technologists, entrepreneurs and key industry figures.

There will be guest presentations by artists Olafur Eliasson and KAWS, and technologist Rodrigo Marques; a visit to the Serpentine Galleries for a talk by artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist and a gallery visit and talk with Gilbert and George; as well as input from writers and curators leading the field.

This access offers a unique chance to learn first hand how these individuals are engaging with, exhibiting, collecting, negotiating and understanding the impact of these new technologies on the art world ecosystem.

The potential role of new immersive media in an art world trying to adjust and respond to the climate crisis is apparent.

The art fair and biennale models that have dominated the international artworld for the last quarter of a century seem unacceptable to ecologically engaged audiences and practitioners. Thousands of people flying to another continent for a weekend to buy and sell art that also has been transported there by air no longer seems like the ideal mode of exchange. Politically engaged artists and curators flying to distant biennials to participate in discussions about urgent issues – such as the climate crisis – seems even more ridiculous. 

In recent years VR works have been regularly included in biennales and museum exhibitions, but usually in ways that obey traditional institutional structures. Could one instead imagine virtual works distributed across geographies in novel ways, connecting local audiences in ways that create entirely new exhibition formats? In other words, will these technologies change the structure of the art world and make possible new forms of global exchange for a future in which we will be less keen to jump on a plane?

The RCA and Acute Art are uniquely placed to help you navigate these questions. Many of Acute Art’s collaborations with artists have an ecological focus. And at the RCA, encouraging designers and artists to think about making sustainable works, alongside sustaining careers, is key to an ethical approach to learning through making.

Artists have always embraced new mediums. And yet one cannot say that the artworld’s dominant attitude towards modern technology has been one of sheer enthusiasm, even if the last century saw moments of techno-optimism, from Italian Futurism and Russian

Constructivism to the 1960s movement E.A.T. (Experiments in Art and Technology). Today, some of the techno visionaries whose works we will closely study during the short course are exploring the poetic possibilities of the latest digital tools.

But key voices of philosophy and critical theory, such as the Frankfurt School’s most sombre representatives, established an attitude of techno-scepticism so fundamental that any form of playful affirmation, let alone enthusiasm, had to appear as at best naive. The essence of technological reason, we were told, lies in hegemonic control and in totalitarian exploitation of nature. Its distancing effects makes it an enemy of more authentic forms of experience, like that of great art.

At a moment when we can no longer imagine a world without technology, it is vital to ask how we, the inhabitants of this planet, imagine the world and its present and future machines – photography, film, radio, television, video, the computer, virtual reality, blockchain technology – will continue to alter the possibilities of artistic expression and lived experience.

The short course provides the opportunity to get to grips with theoretical debates such as these, which underpin these new artworks. You will complete the course better equipped to position yourself within this discourse.

Research, creativity and innovation are at the core of the Royal College of Art’s ethos. This initiative with Acute Art provides yet another opportunity to realise a central element of the College’s mission as an art and design research university: to leverage a capital ‘A’ into the operative acronym of our moment in STEM, or Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics.

It is thought by some that STEM disciplines will be pistons in the engines of the Fourth Industrial Revolution – a fundamental transformation in the way we live, labour and relate to each other. We would do well to remember that steam drove the first Industrial Revolution. And STEAM must drive the fourth if we are to realise this next revolution with a view to the ethical and experiential implications for our earth and humanity in all its dimensions.

Acute Art is a pioneering Virtual and Augmented Reality laboratory, studio, research centre and production company and a perfect partner for the RCA to join with in this pursuit.

John Slyce, Senior Tutor (Research)

Present Futures: Virtual and Augmented Reality in Art is a five day summer short course designed to introduce participants to the fascinating world of VR and AR. Run in partnership with VR and AR art production company, Acute Art, the course offers unique insights into the impact of these new immersive technologies on contemporary art and its institutions.

The short course starts on Monday 28 August 2023, with early bird discount until 30 June 2023.