Beyond the Canvas/Bliss

• Tonio Mundry
• contact@toniomundry.com
• Berlin, Germany

Keywords: Virtual Reality, Oil Painting, Landscape, Materiality, Interactive, Immersive, Artificial Nature.

Technology influences nearly every aspect of human life, of course the arts deal with this increase of a “better living”. As an artist I use new technologies as a tool to depict and at the same time challenge the perception of our "real" life, which of course is already greatly influenced by digital media of all sorts.

However, I want to go one step further, as I illustrate the boundaries between reality and illusion by trying to dissolve or to blur them. Also I want to integrate the viewer into my artwork, let him experience immersion, manipulation and phenomena of perception.

At first glance, the viewer enters a classic exhibition of several oil paintings, moreover he gets invited to enter the painting through an Oculus Rift. Now, objects can be observed from all sides; one can enter a new landscape or look out the window, take a peek behind the image objects and reveal the hidden. An experience which sounds like a help to escape reality, rather corresponds with the desire for unification of two worlds and the dissolution of the picture frame; which also represents my original idea: The creation of a walk-in painting.

The painting itself, which serves as a door to the virtual world, is a translation of 3D objects on a plane surface, the spatiality is nullified. They seem like some kind of template or construction paper, which is determined by the optimum use of space. The mentioned painted objects are digitized with a 3D scanning technology, translated by a program to a point cloud, from which in turn a 3D model is reconstructed.

Beyond the Canvas - Bliss

Bliss – a door to a new perception of reality, which should be seen as a following part of the series Beyond the Canvas, shows nothing more and nothing less than the default computer wallpaper of Microsoft´s Windows XP. A familiar photograph to nearly every computer user since 2001, showing the perfect countryside of California, shot by Charles O' Rear. I chose that picture as a template for my sujet as it is.

The viewer confronts himself with a classic landscape oil painting. With the help of contemporary technology (VR-headset, 3D-Scan etc.) I try to invite the viewer to exit their comfort zone and to enter Bliss. Interesting to me is the question of how the classical two-dimensional painting is perceived after attending the three-dimensional virtual image world. To which extent changes the image reception or even the perception of the real world?

In the light of rapid technological progress, man shows the tendency to equate images with reality; hence the desire for ever more realistic images and a high degree of immersion.

The head mounted display is used to dissolve the classic picture frames, and to furthermore give the viewer the feeling of free movement within the painting.

Also, the issue shows the wish to merge our real life with the cyber world, maybe this is our new reality — a state of perfect happiness.