Virtual Reality Playground

30th June 2019

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Artist: Brendan Walker, Thrill Laboratory
Partners: Doncaster Art Fair, Doncaster Wool Market, Without Walls

About: This town centre event is run by local artists Chinwe Russell, RUOS were keen to see if we could join up with the Doncaster Art Fair and help them to grow new audiences by delivering a participatory activity alongside. 

VR Playground is a touring, immersive, kinetic installation based on two popular entertainment technologies: the multi millennia-old swing and the 21st-century virtual reality (VR) headset – the former designed to excite the vestibular system, the latter designed to excite the visual cortex.

Swingers enter highly emotive, abstract and dynamic visual worlds that are activated, and reinforced by their swinging motion. Swingers become performers in architectural space, attracting and entertaining growing crowds of spectators.

The swings were chosen because of their accessibility. We brought an extra wheelchair accessible swing to the site, along with trialling the use of vibrational vests for any D/deaf audience members.