Forget waiting until next year to get back in the gallery. V&A and HTC VIVE Arts are hosting a unique VR event to celebrate Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser.
While many of us might be stuck indoors with no chance of getting back out to see some culture, it appears that HTC Vive Arts and London’s V&A are bringing a review of their latest exhibition home with an innovative new event. Collaborating together as part of a very different partnership, HTC Vive Arts and V&A will host the V&A museum’s first-ever virtual reality event and invite audiences from around the world on a mind-bending trip into the wonderful world of Wonderland next month.
Kicking off at 2pm (GMT) / 9pm (CST) on the 22 October 2020, a launch event will act as a glimpse into the V&A’s upcoming Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser before it physically arrives in the museum come 21 March 2021. This preview will broadcast on VR platforms, as well as via 2D mediums on the V&A’s Youtube channel. Over the course of 45 minutes, viewers an get a glimpse of the brand new Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser exhibition, which itself will be hosted n VR. Rather than anybody to come down to London, you’ll be able to chart the evolution of Alice in Wonderland from its origins over 158 years ago to the global cultural phenomenon, it is today, on the Engage VR platform. Through Engage’s advanced technology, participants will be able to join the event as avatars, interacting with one another in VR and jumping into a full schedule of events when the launch preview is over.
Curious Alice
A special, at-home experience released 22 October 2020 to coincide with the preview. This will feature enriched animation as well as additional scenes and narrative elements, including the presence of the iconic ‘white rabbit’ as your own personal companion. This new VR experience will be based on Icelandic artist Kristjana Williams’ specially commissioned illustrations for the exhibition’s publication, available to buy now. Curious Alice will be available for users to download through VIVEPORT, as well as through other major online VR platforms.
A Curious Game of Croquet
A VR experience on VIVE Cosmos headsets within the exhibition, when it opens March 2021. Located in the exhibition’s ‘Staging Alice’ section – exploring the many interpretations of Alice across stage and screen – visitors will be transported through mirror-like portals, will interact with the book’s famous characters and will test their skill against the Red Queen in a croquet game like no other.
While I’m pretty far down my list of Netflix boxsets, this could prove to be a wonderfully different distraction to the outside world. Find out more about the launch event and the upcoming exhibitions over on the V&A website.
