The Giphy Arts VR app lets you explore a gallery of animated work from over 20 artists.
The animated gif platform that finally brought meaning to office Slack chats through an endless selection of shareable GIFs is now surprising us in VR.
Giphy has launched a new VR app, Museum of GIF Art (MoGA), that looks to be the first ever virtual reality GIF art museum. This first MoGA exhibition, dubbed Loop Dreams, features works by 20 artists. Compatible with any mobile VR viewer, the app is available on all platforms including the HTC Vive, Android, and iPhone app.
The Vive VR version of this app is when the Museum of GIF Art really shines, letting you use the controllers to interact with elements in the artwork. You can hold a tasty alcoholic drink in a coconut or pick up a TV remote to flip through GIF channels on a wall. You gradually descend through a variety of customized and strange environments, exploring the artwork in an entirely new context. And when I mean gradually descend, there are giant holes in the ground that you can peek into and fall through to the next exhibition space. Just like an actual museum gallery, you can navigate the experience all while learning about the GIF artists responsible for the work.
The VR Loop Dreams exhibition accompanies Giphy’s 2016 IRL exhibition the company hosted in New York last year, which was an actual GIF gallery open to the public.
According to Giphy Arts, the VR museum will regularly feature different exhibitions throughout the year, so we have some new artwork to look forward to. Giphy Arts, is the art and community department of Giphy, that looks for new opportunities to showcase digital art in a new context and medium.
