Project started in 2016

This project was first workshopped at the Barbican in January 2017, as part of their ‘Open Lab’ programme, and later shown at Modern Art Oxford in June 2017 as part of the Future Knowledge programme curated by Emma Ridgway. Using a pioneering multi-person virtual reality software framework, participants were able to experience themselves as embodied energy fields, and invited to interact with one another and also with rigorous real-time molecular physics simulations. Sculpting the Invisible World was set up to investigate the conventions of how people interact in virtual spaces, and the way in which ‘touch’ is perceived between both real and simulated virtual bodies. Using methods from rigorous computational molecular physics and real-time digital rendering, it was possible to simulate virtual atomic shapes whose motion participants could playfully sculpt and pass between one another, creating a dynamic visual landscape.