This is an experiment born of chance, as I am not a digital artist by training. It began with a VR headset purchased to explore 3D modelling for my sculpture practice. Yet, in an unexpected twist, I stumbled upon a painting application, and with it came a cascade of thoughts that carried me far beyond mere play.
In VR, everything is virtual: the space, the environment, the light, the canvas, the easel, the brushes, the paint—even time itself. I could accept that objects could be recreated virtually. But when time, that immutable force, also became malleable, something profound emerged: Does time exist as we imagine it? If space is a construct of perception, then is our experience of seconds and minutes not also an illusion?
I call time in VR “virtual” because the palette settings allow me to adjust the dryness or wetness of the paint—manipulating, in effect, the flow of time. In the physical world, time is the axis along which all things change. A thick layer of paint takes time to dry; it waits, as we wait, in a continuum that cannot be hurried. But in VR, this rule dissolves. Time becomes a variable, not a constant. And when time bends to my will, the meaning of material existence begins to shift.
Here lies the allure. By adjusting the wetness of paint, I am not waiting; I am commanding time itself. Each brushstroke can be undone, each moment rewound. With a flick of the controller, I am not only speeding up or slowing down time but reversing it entirely. In this virtual space, what was fixed in reality—irreversible, unchangeable—becomes mutable, fluid, and free.
This fascinates me. What becomes of art’s material essence as we move toward a future where the virtual and real intertwine? Does the meaning of materiality, its place in our philosophical understanding of existence, transform in this new realm? I do not yet have answers, but the questions enthral me.
Eva During 伊娃卓灵 