Inspired by the artist’s dual Caribbean and European heritage, Virtual ISLANDs explores the relationship between the experience of virtual immersion and the physicality of being submerged. This multimedia installation includes a 6 degrees of freedom (DOF) VR experience, inviting a reading of “virtual reality” practice as aesthetic / artistic creation. It foregrounds submersion alongside immersion to highlight the relation between water and identity.
Virtual ISLANDs, Photo: Olivia Mc Gilchrist
Virtual ISLANDs, Photo: Olivia Mc Gilchrist
Olivia Mc Gilchrist
Mc Gilchrist is a white French-Jamaican who researches ways in which colonial legacies extend their reach to VR technology. This is done by highlighting how Caribbean thinkers conceptualize the self as neither singular nor universal, but as hybrid, relational, whilst still specific. Olivia Mc Gilchrist is a Hexagram Network doctoral student member at Concordia University.