Tuesday 7th - Saturday 11th October - Essay Planning

This week's lessons were devoted to planning and structuring our essay on virtual exhibitions - Tuesday's focus was introductions, Thursday's the main paragraph body and Saturday the conclusion. I am fairly confident with my essay writing skills from my experiences with A-Level and university writing on my previous course, but the peer review nature of these lessons did enable me to not only learn from others and observe different points of view to my own but to apply myself as an editor and help others achieve their best by talking through and improving their writing with them. I found this a very enjoyable and engaging experience; I enjoy writing, and applying myself fully to the technical and argumentative side of writing is something I rarely do in my own time. This class gave me the opportunity to step back into the academic writing role both as a student and in some aspects as a teacher, which felt good.

Some notes I took during Saturday's class, which gave me some different points of view to consider writing about in my essay.

I spent the majority of my time during Tuesday and Thursday's lessons doing research for my essay, since I felt secure in my knowledge of structure and argument building. I spent some time looking for different virtual galleries, and one of the most striking was Valentino Garavani's virtual museum. Navigated via mouse clicks, the Garavani museum takes the viewer through a literal virtual gallery, composed of 3D computer graphic architecture and 2D images of Garavani's pieces, alongside photography documenting his life and other work. This was the closest example I found to a virtual exhibition in the sense of mimicking life, and I plan to use it in my essay.

One of the 'rooms' in the Valentino Garavani museum. Each mannequin is a 2D image superimposed onto the 3D work. Not a perfect method of displaying three-dimensional dresses but leagues ahead of a simple online image gallery in terms of curating potential.

I also decided to look at some video games as examples of virtual galleries, since they are the premier examples of interactive virtual environments available today. Some games in particular focus especially on their visual aspects, such as FEZ or The Unfinished Swann. Games like these are easy for even the uninitiated to navigate and serve almost the same function as an exhibition, showcasing the prowess and creativity of the artists involved in their creation. Virtual reality technology is also advancing primarily in relation to video games, since the market is large and expanding, and this technology combined with a more developed version of Garavani's museum could spell great things for the future of virtual galleries.

The Unfinished Swan (above) and FEZ (below). Both games experiment with the perception of reality and are focused first and foremost on visual presentation, similarly to most art exhibitions.