Garage Museum of Contemporary Art will present a VR walk inside Irina Korina’s installation The Tail Wags the Comet at the VR Film Festival in Saint Petersburg on June 3 and 4, 2017.
In spring 2017, Garage presented a new Atrium Commission—an installation by Moscow artist Irina Korina. Korina’s three-story architectural intervention for the Atrium space physically and ideologically transports audiences into different surroundings. Made of quotidian construction materials such as brightly-colored tent cloth, roofing tiles, galvanized metal, wood and paper, as well as various scents, The Tail Wags the Comet lives up to the absurdity inherent in its name through witty navigation tactics and intricate detail that at once disorients and entices the viewer as they embark on an alternative route from the entrance of the museum to the exhibition spaces on the first floor, or vice versa.
In order to adapt the installation for deaf and hard of hearing visitors, Garage’s Department of Inclusive Programs have produced a video with Russian Sign Language interpretation of information about the work. Due to its construction, the installation is inaccessible to visitors in wheelchairs, so Garage has also developed a VR tour of its spaces, which quickly proved popular with all visitors: over 5,000 people have been on the virtual tour in two months.
On June 3 and 4, Garage will bring the tour to the VR Film Festival at Tessart in Saint Petersburg, and Garage staff will tell visitors about the use of VR technology at the museum.
Garage has used virtual and augmented reality in several public programs. In 2012, the visitors to Temporary Structures in Gorky Park: From Melnikov to Ban could bring models of buildings to life with a special augmented reality app. In 2015, an interactive video installation allowed viewers to trace connections within the Russian art world at the exhibition The Family Tree of Russian Contemporary Art.