Model, Muse, Object (Working Title)

Model, Muse, Object is a solo virtual reality experience developed by artist and designer Melissa Teng and me, for the Isabella Stewart Gardner’s Third Thursday event. In it players enter a tridimensional rendition of one of John Singer Sargent’s paintings, and find the bodies of Greek deities, modeled and painted in order to produce the convincing sensation of their physical presence. Within this virtual world, players can see and use their own animated hands, which respond to the player’s movement realistically. These hands are, however, rendered in a stylized and colorful way when compared to the Greek deities’ appearance. After players gain familiarity with their new embodiment, they may notice that the static Greek deities have, all around their bodies, colorful patches rendered in the same style as the player’s hands. Astute players will then touch these patches and activate, by doing so, audio recordings that seem to emanate from within the deities’ bodies. The recordings are the voices of contemporary male and female models that pose for artists and drawing classes across Boston. Melissa and I conducted these interviews, the result of an open call to models of all around the city in which we ask them to tell their stories. In these recordings, models recount their experiences modeling for the first time, their favorite anecdotes in the model stand, and their opinions on the subject of representation. As long as players are willing to reach beyond the inert bodies of the neoclassical deities, they will be able to listen to candid, moving, or funny experiences by contemporary real life models.