VR market realities tested at Frieze New York

The trend toward art-as-experience has proven a revenue boon to museums and institutions, if the record-setting attendance numbers at exhibitions like Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Rooms are any indication. Yet the question remains whether these crowd-pleasing installations have an effect on the market for technology-driven, experiential art, which is being tested by its increased appearance at art fairs.An entire section devoted to virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) works at Frieze New York this month raises this question succinctly. Curated by the art critic Daniel Birnbaum, Electric features pieces both from artists whose only medium is technology and from those with more traditional backgrounds in painting and sculpture who utilise VR to create new experiences of their work, including Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg, Anish Kapoor, Koo Jeong A, Städelschule Architecture Class, R.H. Quaytman, Rachel Rossin and Timur Si-Qin. Visitors can experience the section’s two programmes, Alternate Current (AC) and Direct Current (DC), inside a special booth where they will alternate every half hour. “There’s a new generation of artists who can actually write code,” Birnbaum says. “But there are others who want to translate their traditional artistic and intellectual abilities to this new world.”