ABOUT
With Voxel Bridge, the Vancouver Biennale takes Contemporary Art to the epicenter of blockchain innovation.
The underside of the south end of Vancouver’s Cambie Bridge is being transformed by artist Jessica Angel into a 19,000 square feet (1,765 square meters) public art installation that comes to life as the biggest blockchain-based augmented reality experience of its kind. At first glance, the artwork takes the form of a massive two-dimensional vinyl mural that wraps the pedestrian walkway, supporting columns, and underside of the bridge, providing an immersive experience reminiscent of a computer circuit board slightly askew. With the use of the Vancouver Biennale app, which can be downloaded at no cost for iOS and Android devices, visitors walk through the mural and use their cell phones to dive into an interactive digital wonderland. This multi-sensory adventure is made possible by the revolutionary advancements in Augmented Reality (AR) developed for this installation by Spheroid Universe and supported by blockchain technology on the Kusama network.
Voxel Bridge is a milestone event in Contemporary Art. This is not simply a mural or a piece of crypto art. Voxel Bridge exists simultaneously in three worlds: in the real world under Vancouver’s Cambie Bridge, in Augmented Reality as experienced through the app, and in live blockchain. As an integrated fusion of the real and digital worlds, it delivers a groundbreaking audience experience using the latest advancements in Augmented Reality technology. There are twenty different interactive animations throughout the AR experience through which visitors learn about the history of the Kusama network and how it’s created, funded and governed. The artist uses live blockchain data as a creative tool to create a direct real-time projection of the blockchain, taking this abstract technical concept and visualizing it so that people can see it live through the artwork.
Blockchain technology is widely considered to have the potential to change the way we interact in the world. It is currently believed to be the most secure way to record and track digital data, capable of eliminating fraud, counterfeiting, and hacking. The possibilities for all business sectors, including banking, voting, healthcare, art, and government transparency are endless. Voxel Bridge is the first art installation to show the world this transformative, emerging technology.
QUICK FACTS
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Size: 19,000 square feet / 1,765 square meters
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Material: Vinyl and Augmented Reality
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Location: South Cambie Bridge underside, Vancouver Canada
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Voxel Bridge is the biggest blockchain based augmented reality experience of its kind.
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Voxel Bridge is the first art installation to visualize blockchain technology in real-time.
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Voxel Bridge is the first immersive experience in public space with the purpose to educate about blockchain technology, using Kusama Network events and funds from the Kusama Treasury.
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There are 20 AR experiences throughout Voxel Bridge.
HIGH-RES PHOTOS
VIDEOS
THE TEAM
JESSICA ANGEL
The visionary behind Voxel Bridge is Colombian artist Jessica Angel, an alumna of the Vancouver Biennale’s Artist Residency Program in 2018 and 2019. Based in Brooklyn, NY, Angel has taken an early leading role in the art and blockchain movement, inspiring, advocating, and educating artists, developers, and technology enthusiasts to embrace leading-edge blockchain technologies to create and fund ambitious art projects. Jessica curated #ArtProject2020, a 5-day virtual conference presented through the Vancouver Biennale in the context of this project that gathered the leading minds in the NFT space. Her notable participation in the bridging between the art and blockchain ecosystems has led her to bring projects like Kusama Network, Status, Maker Foundation, the Foundation for Art and Blockchain, Spheroid Universe, and hexeosis amongst others to contribute to this initiative. Angel’s immersive installations that present a physical experience of the virtual world have been showcased across the Americas.
Visit www.jessicaangelarts.com.
VANCOUVER BIENNALE
In celebrating art in public space, the Vancouver Biennale transforms the urban landscape into an Open Air Museum, creating globally inspired cultural experiences where people live, work, play, and transit. Each exhibition becomes a catalyst for community engagement, learning, and social action. The Vancouver Biennale features internationally renowned and emerging contemporary artists that represent a diversity of cultural perspectives and artistic disciplines including sculpture, digital media, performance works, music, and film. As the definition of public space increasingly shifts to virtual space, the Vancouver Biennale’s installations also include the most technically advanced examples of augmented and virtual reality.
Visit www.vancouverbiennale.com for more information.
KUSAMA NETWORK
Kusama is a scalable, multichain network for radical innovation, enabling cost-effective interoperability and scalability for blockchain developers who want to push the limits of what's possible. The network uses the most advanced technology in the Polkadot ecosystem and is a development environment for teams who want to move fast and innovate exclusively on Kusama, or prepare for deployment on Polkadot. Some of these teams building on Kusama include Acala, building a custom blockchain for DeFi, and Chainlink, building a blockchain dedicated to its Oracle network. Kusama was founded in 2019 by Gavin Wood, co-founder and original CTO of Ethereum, and is being built and maintained by the same teams that are behind Polkadot.
Visit https://kusama.network for more information.
SPHEROID UNIVERSE
Spheroid Universe is a platform for developing and launching AR/MR/XR projects on the breakthrough technological foundation of the Spheroid XR Cloud and the Spheroid Script cross-platform programming language. Spheroid Universe is also an actively growing ecosystem with an almost 100,000-member community that constructs the Augmented Reality world, moving step by step from futuristic models to real manifestations in science and technology, art and culture, blockchain and DeFi. The social, humanistic basis of the Spheroid Universe ecosystem is the concept of Space NFT - the basic element of the ecosystem that connects AR and the user's personal activity. It accumulates value similarly to a social media account, but unlike it, belongs to the user, not corporations that wholly own all personal accounts. For Spheroid Universe, Voxel Bridge is not just a high-tech challenge in implementing modern art in extended reality space, but also a pilot experience in visualizing NFT art objects that came to exist and circulate in the Kusama network.
Visit www.spheroiduniverse.io for more information.
PRESENTERS
CREATIVE PARTNERS
OFFICIAL PARTNERS
CONTACT
VANCOUVER BIENNALE / TIME ZONE (UTC - 07:00)
Valerie Smaller (English)
valerie@vancouverbiennale.com
+1 604-836-5629 Mobile
+1 604-682-1289 Office 9:00 am - 5:00 pm
Barrie Mowatt (English)
barrie@vancouverbiennale.com
778-288-7603 Mobile/Text
ARTIST / TIME ZONE (UTC -04:00)
Jessica Angel (English, Spanish)
jessica.angel@gmail.com
KUSAMA NETWORK / TIME ZONE (UTC -04:00)
Peter Mauric (English)
Head of Public Affairs
Parity Technologies
press@web3.foundation
SPHEROID UNIVERSE / TIME ZONE (UTC +03:00)
Andrey Almiashev (English, Russian) almiashev@spheroiduniverse.io
+7 985-229-3515 Mobile
INTERVIEWS: Available upon request.
© 2021 VANCOUVER BIENNALE