SINGAPORE — The Whitney Museum of American Art partnered with WPP creative agency, Design Bridge and Partners, to create, design, and host its inaugural immersive art experience, Refigured: A Virtual Conversation and Tour. The fully digital event, designed in collaboration with creative technology teams of Design Bridge and Partners based in Singapore, New York, and São Paulo, was hosted on Mozilla Hubs.
Design Bridge and Partners used the spirit of the Whitney as a metaphor to capture the essence of the building’s structure, philosophy, and surrounding environment, creating a new plane of existence for the museum. The virtual space incorporates light, reflections, and material cues from the real world, using asymmetrical forms and industrial structures to achieve a sculptural presence while embracing the limitless nature of the digital realm.
The partnership with the Whitney is the next in a series of collaborations for Design Bridge and Partners’ Singapore creative technology team, led by Jessica Tan, Digital Creative Director, with clients looking at the next generation of digital experiences to engage audiences through the creative possibilities of Web 3.0. The design of the virtual space for the Whitney sets the scene for countless possibilities in which the audience can reimagine how we experience art without the constraints of physical space and being.
Drawn from the Whitney’s collection and including video, animation, sculpture, and augmented reality, the works in Refigured reflect on interactions between digital and physical materiality. The exhibition brings together a group of artists, Morehshin Allahyari, American Artist, Zach Blas and Jemima Wyman, Auriea Harvey, and Rachel Rossin, who engage with the concept of “refiguring,” appropriating material forms and bodies to re-create and reinvent them. Refiguring becomes a process of imagining alternative worlds as a means for constructing identity.
As part of the virtual immersive experience, Christiane Paul, Curator of Digital Art Experience at the Whitney, led several artists in conversation, encouraging them to discuss their work, with visitors invited to watch a live stream of the event on Zoom and explore the artworks in the virtual event space following the conversation.
“As digital technology increasingly intersects with our daily lives and shapes them, we are excited to offer public programs in a virtual world that reflects on this evolution and lends itself to the artists’ work,” said Christiane. “We look forward to exploring the potential and possibilities of future discussions or events in a virtual venue.”
“This work, a result of collaboration between multi-disciplinary talents across our global network, is a case in point of how creativity and art cut across physical and cultural boundaries,” said Jessica Tan. “Digital experiences can be just as real as physical ones, and it is fascinating to explore how traditionally physical brands can now express themselves creatively when extending their brand into these new worlds.”
