Video transcript
ARTEXPRESS 2024 - 03. Virtual gallery VR tutorial

[intro music]

NARRATOR: One of the most exciting parts of the Art Express Virtual Gallery is the fully immersive 3D interactive gallery we present on any page. You can select the enter VR button at the top or on the homepage of each year. Select the gallery button to enter. You're presented with a choice of standard or high quality, depending on your available hardware and internet connection.

The virtual space is a custom design space that we've created to really showcase all of the works each year. A few things to note before we jump straight in. There's a help button down in the bottom left corner that can tell you all of the different ways to interactwith the site, whether you're using a keyboard and mouse or touch, um, or whether, whether you want to go into vr. There's a bunch of different keyboard controls as well for different things. You can also at any time switch qualities if you wanna test your hardware or if you're having trouble viewing the site on your computer, you can switch down to normal quality from high quality. And if you're using a Google Cardboard or older VR device, you can show hotspots on the ground, which is a great way to navigate without worrying about being able to use all of the other features of the site.

The other thing you'll find down the bottom right corner is a button to answer vr. So if you have a VR headset attached, or if you're viewing this on a Google Cardboard device, you click that button and you can enter a fully immersive mode in a headset.

Okay, let's look around so we can look around by, um, double clicking on the ground anywhere and that will move us to that position. Um, so let's go over and look at the sign at the front. That's one way to navigate Another way to navigate is with the WAS and D keys. So it's almost like a computer game. We can walk around the site. So let's start off going down these stairs. Let's walk down these stairs and we'll find the first of our themes, which is called interrogations this year. And when you're on a floor, um, of this year, you'll see works on the wall and you can hover over each work with your mouse. or if you're in a VR headset, you can look at the work or use your controller and you'll see a range of different curated works around this floor. Let's look around and find a work we might want to look at. Let's come over here. Okay, so hover over a work and, and select it and it will take you into a room of that work only. This is a great way to really experience this work exactly the way the student intended it. So you can walk right up to the work, have a close look, um, look around the work. What you'll also find on the wall is a card. You can pick up that card, um, read all the information and you can click the drop button to drop the card again.

So all of the works, all of the bodies of work have a separate room in this way. At the back of the room, on the back two walls, there are some navigation buttons. So a few different ways to use this. You can always go to the next and the last work, and that will just go through the works in order. So it's a great way to experience all the different rooms one by one by clicking next or last, um, to go through all of those different works. That's one way to jump between the works once you're in the VR space.

Um, the other option is to return to the gallery. So at any stage we can go back to the gallery and we'll be now standing in front of that work that we were just in the room of. Um, and we can move around and look for other works that we might want to experience. So I'm down in the bottom level now and I've got a, a bunch of works in here.

Um, we, we have a lift this year. We added a lift last year. Um, uh, we didn't have a lift in some of the first years, but if the lift isn't there, you can always push the lift call button and wait as you would in the real world, and the lift will arrive. So let's go in the lift and, and let's jump up to the top level, So we'll click, um, level two and we'll move up to the top level and you'll see us go right through the gallery up to the top level.

Okay, so it's a bit more open space up here, a bit breezier, um, perhaps. Um, but again, there's a bunch of different works that it all works in the same way. You can select one, um, go into the room of that work and experience that work, um, the way it's supposed to be.

We've also included a handy map to easily jump between the different themes. So on this map, you can select one of the different spaces and it will take you straight to that level. Um, these maps are scattered around the gallery, so feel free to click on that as another way to move around between levels like the lift or if you really want just walk down the stairs. Um, it should be easy to navigate around and find all of the works that you want to look at.

The other thing you can do if you select a 3D work, I'll go into the room of this work here and when I'm in, uh, the room of a 3D work, I can walk right around that and have a look at it. Um, but I can also pick it up by clicking it. And once I click it, I can now turn it around in my view. Um, if I'm on a computer or a desktop, uh, using my mouse, if I'm on a tablet using my finger. And if I'm on a headset, this will be linked to my hand with the controller, so you can actually turn it around in your hand. So that's a really great feature to really expect. Inspect these works in context in a gallery type environment, but also be able to focus on each student one by one by reading the information, um, and being able to look at all of that special information they're providing.

Finally, some works have video components as well. And this, this is an example. So I'll go into this work for works with video components. When you're in the room of the work, you have a little viewer on the wall and you can click the play button And that will play the video. So you can really watch it as if you're in a gallery environment. When you're in the gallery. At any stage, if you really find a work, you wanna inspect a bit close or look at a bit more detail.

The final option to exit is to return to the webpage. So if I select that option in the gallery, it will take me directly to the work page on ARTEXPRESS virtual, and I can then go through all the different components, watch the video separately. in this instance, look at the student's VAPD diary, read the marker commentary and so forth. I can also on these pages jump straight back into the virtual gallery by clicking the view and VR button and I'll be back into the room that I just left.

So there are a lot of different ways to navigate. The galleries over the years have had features added and changed slightly as we've slightly improved the technology of what we've done. Um, do read the manual, do read the how to page if you get stuck. Um, we hope you have fun. It should be a, a fun, enjoyable experience and be able to look at the works in a wonderful way, um, as we move forward.

Thank you.