Your view matter, 2022, an immersive artwork created by artist Olafur Eliasson using virtual reality (VR), launches globally on Monday 5th September 2022. Commissioned by MetaKovan and produced in collaboration with Acute Art, the artwork is available on yourviewmatter.art to experience free of charge in VR, and it is an NFT artwork. Your view matter will form an integral part of the exhibition Olafur Eliasson: Nel tuo tempo (In your time), at Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, and is set to be exhibited at further locations internationally, including in India.
Throughout his career, Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson has created works that explore the exchange between viewers, artwork, and the context that surrounds them. Working from an idea of experience as an active probing of the world, Eliasson presents viewers with objects and environments that inspire engagement. It is the viewer’s presence that activates the art, and their visual experience that completes the work. For Your view matter, 2022, Eliasson invites audiences to journey in virtual reality through a series of six forms, accompanied by a minimalist soundtrack created by the artist.
“To make virtual spaces into spaces of embodied exploration is a long-held interest of mine. Your view matter invites you to physically grasp how technologies intertwine with our capacity to see and to co-produce what we see. It’s a process of unlearning and relearning how vision works, involving not only vision but also the movement of your head, body, and brain. In this way, I hope the artwork acts as a host for your self-awareness, inviting you to ‘listen’ and ‘speak’ with your eyes.”
– Olafur Eliasson
In the artwork, users move through a progression of ever larger geometric spaces and finally reach a sphere. The architecture of these virtual spaces is based on the Platonic solids – the tetrahedron, octahedron, icosahedron, dodecahedron, and cube. These three-dimensional forms are each made of a set of identical and recognisable shapes – triangles, pentagons, and squares – that result in simple yet surprisingly complex spaces.
The walls and ceilings of each form scintillate with ever-changing moiré patterns, distortions that arise wherever similar patterns are overlaid. In Your view matter these patterns – some quite colourful and others in stark black and white – change dramatically in response to the viewer’s movements and active engagement.
When you look at a moiré, you are in fact seeing how you see – and you see yourself moving. Without your motion, there would be no moiré. I have long been preoccupied with ephemeral and atmospheric spaces in my work. Art allows us to see reality as negotiable, bringing with it a freedom to reinterpret our own past, present and future.
– Olafur Eliasson
From 5th September 2022, Your view matter can be explored free of charge online at yourviewmatter.art using any VR headset. An augmented reality (AR) version of the work is also available via the Acute Art app. The work will be exhibited to the public for the first time at Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, as part of the exhibition Olafur Eliasson: Nel tuo tempo (In your time), opening 22nd September.
Your view matter was commissioned by MetaKovan and created in collaboration with Acute Art, who provides the world’s leading artists access to cutting-edge technologies that allow them to translate their creative visions into new digital mediums – including virtual, augmented and mixed realities.
About Your view matter, 2022
Your view matter is an immersive artwork in virtual and augmented reality, and an NFT created by Olafur Eliasson. The work is commissioned by Metakovan in collaboration with Acute Art.
Your view matter can be explored free of charge using a VR headset at yourviewmatter.art.
The work is set to be exhibited at numerous locations globally, starting at the exhibition Nel tuo tempo (In your time) at Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, which opens on 22 September 2022. Tickets can be found at palazzostrozzi.org. Further locations to be announced.
The NFT will be minted on Polkadot, a protocol that connects blockchains via the generic assets parachain Statemint. At the time of release in September 2022, Polkadot is regarded as having the lowest total electricity consumption and total carbon emissions per year of all crypto platforms. Currently, the process of minting the NFT on Polkadot (Statemint) is estimated to produce 53.2 micrograms of CO2. The final carbon footprint of the artwork will be calculated after release.
