Virtual Reality and Frieze Viewing Room, Seoul 2022
The inaugural edition of Frieze Seoul, Frieze’s first fair in Asia, was accompanied by a new iteration of Vortic’s ongoing major partnership with Frieze. An immersive enhanced Frieze Viewing Room Seoul used Vortic technology to transport prominent international collectors via Virtual Reality (VR) to an immaculately presented virtual series of imagined spaces set into a cliffside above Seoul for the new Frieze fair.
The first edition of this partnership, at Frieze Viewing Room New York 2022, saw collectors spending four times longer on gallery pages that included Vortic 3D exhibition spaces. Building on the enhanced viewing room for web and mobile, Vortic added virtual reality viewing to the partnership for Frieze Viewing Room Seoul.
Using cutting-edge technology, virtual viewing spaces custom designed by Deborah Bass at Base Interior transported viewers to a hillside on the outskirts of the city. Selected prominent international collectors were invited to be a part of the VR experience, allowing them to visit the presentations of participating galleries in VR in advance of the fair’s physical opening.
Vortic’s social VR with spatial audio gives guests the possibility of coming together in the same exhibition from distinct locations, interacting via audio and avatars. Using this exciting new feature, a gallerist in Seoul could give an individual tour to a collector in New York who is unable to travel to the fair, or a collector from London could spend time privately with a gallery presentation before arranging a meeting in VR with the gallerist, curator, or their art advisor. As part of Frieze Seoul’s VIP programming, some galleries even used Vortic’s social VR to invite collectors to exclusive walkthroughs with their team to offer in-depth, personal commentary on their presentations.
In these times where both travel restrictions and growing awareness of the environmental impact of the international art calendar are serious concerns, a virtual reality platform designed to meet the high fidelity needs of the art world offers, for the first time, a genuinely enjoyable and beautiful alternative, whilst retaining the human interaction and social elements that underpin the art world.
15 galleries took part in the first edition of Frieze Seoul enhanced viewing rooms, including a strong contingent of Korean spaces, creating unforgettable and engaging virtual experiences: Arario Gallery, Gallery Baton, Castelli Gallery, Don Gallery, Dvir Gallery, Les Enluminures, Hakgojae Gallery, Xavier Hufkens, Johyun Gallery, Kiang Malingue, Anton Kern Gallery, Lehmann Maupin, PKM Gallery, Two Palms and Yeo Workshop.
Header image: Frieze Viewing Room installation view, Ontologies of Absence, Johyun Gallery, Frieze Seoul 2022. Courtesy Johyun Gallery.
