Visit this Virtual Gallery For an Anti-Gravity Art Experience

When Daniel Smith and Cameron Buckley looked out at the digital art gallery landscape, they saw few that were navigable or interactive. Not content with the status quo, they decided to create Paper-Thin, an experimental art space and virtual reality art archive whose immersion would confound the separation of the real, physical and simulated in the experience of artwork—rendering, as it were, these boundaries paper-thin.

Rachael Archibald’s carnate (in-pinking) is the gallery’s latest installation. When entering Paper-Thin, which looks like a modern art space, the viewer navigates using the arrow keys toward the rear-left of the virtually gallery to find Archibald's piece. The room is spacious, and roughly in the middle stands three walls, around which float digital objects wrapped in painterly texture and depth.

“Rachael Archibald's installation entails antigravity, glowing walls, and a massive boulder flowing through the ceiling and floor like butter,” Smith tells The Creators Project. “[All] works are custom installed, and in many cases completely newly made for the space. Each room is simply a placeholder and point of access, and artists are free to modify any parameters they wish.”

Aside from Archibald’s carnate (in-pinking), Buckley tells The Creators Project that three other artists have already installed works: Alan Resnick’s Ring Worm was introduced in September, Hunter Jonakin’s Collector’s Digital Art Piece: Platinum Artist’s Proof in October, and Daniel Baird and Haseeb Ahmed’s collaborative HWBMx8 in December.

The current iteration of Paper-Thin will feature two more installations—one by Hugo Arcier in January, and another by Andy Lomas in February. Smith says that each of the installations will remain accessible indefinitely. Once all of the rooms are filled, Smith and Buckley will open a new space for new work, which may be designed in collaboration with an architect.

“Paper-Thin grew out of a frustration with the current format of the gallery in the physical world,” Buckley says.  “Restrictions like distance, money, time, and content become minimized in this online format because of the openness and availability of the internet. One of our goals is to offer an alternative to experiencing art in the exclusive way it is exhibited in the physical world, opening it up to more possibilities.”

Click here to see more work by Rachael Archibald.

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