ongoing engagement since 2022
collaboration with NEW INC + EY Metaverse Lab
NEW INC Artist-in-Residence at EY
New Museum
New York, NY
Collaborators:
Salome Asega (NEW INC Director)
Domhnaill Hernon (EY Global Metaverse Labs Lead)
EY Creative Technologists: Danielle McPhatter, Ethan Edwards, Steven Dalton, Tommy L. Sharkey
The NEW INC Artist Residency at EY is a research collaboration exploring extended reality technologies (XR/VR/AR). Through an exchange of knowledge, technical experimentation, and public exhibitions, the collaboration examines new epistemologies emerging with the metaverse and the cognitive impact of immersive digital worlds on our embodied experiences in the physical. Collaboration activities included:
The NEW INC Artist Residency at EY is a research collaboration exploring extended reality technologies (XR/VR/AR). Through an exchange of knowledge, technical experimentation, and public exhibitions, the collaboration examines new epistemologies emerging with the metaverse and the cognitive impact of immersive digital worlds on our embodied experiences in the physical. Collaboration activities included:
As NEW INC Artist in Residence at EY, Splan is developing Metafrictions in collaboration with Domhnaill Hernon (Global Lead at the Cognitive Human Enterprise at EY) and EY Creative Technologists Danielle McPhatter, Ethan Edwards, Steven Dalton, and Tommy L. Sharkey. Through an exchange of knowledge and technical experimentation, their collaboration examines new epistemologies emerging with notions of the metaverse and the cognitive impact of immersive digital worlds on our embodied experiences in the physical.
all devices are storytelling devices
—How do mediating devices of virtual experiences function as storytelling devices?
—What if we embraced the “frictions” of the physical to create more embodied experiences of the virtual?
new interfaces can emerge through hybrid chains of persuasion
—What if we could collectively co-create new experiences through individual agency?
virtual residues persist in the “physical” space around us
— How do the “residues" of the virtual destabilize our understanding of the “real”?
The EY team and Laura Splan came across a joint frustration about virtual reality: When you go into a physical room, you’re a biological, physical entity. When you put on a VR headset, your experience starts, and you're fully immersed from step one. Laura believes our experiences should start the moment we step into the actual space. This idea—how could the experience be more meaningful if it started immediately when entering a VR space—led the EY team to create the concept of “a residue.” This residue is an idea that you when you go into a virtual environment and something is imprinted on you within that environment, that it lasts with you in the physical world and builds a bridge between these two environments and experiences. Ultimately, it’s the idea of putting humans at the center, not just transporting users to a fantastical, virtual place. Because the EY team has worked deeply with artists who are asking these hard questions and thinking about this technology/human intersection, the team is able to build technologies and solutions that tap into this way of thinking.
