Matt Henderson and Stephanie Mendoza are multimedia artists from Portland, OR specializing in 3D/VR toolsets & creative workflows. The pair are essential members of Portland Immersive Media Group (PIMG)—a group of tech-saavy artists exploring the creative potentials of 3D/VR/AR while also engaging in critical dialogue around the implications of the increasing abundance of tech in our lives.
Together the pair exhibited the work created by PIMG which arose through informal collaborative processes and evolved into interlinking worlds threaded together by spacialized interface that is part memory temple, part goodwill.
Hardware: HTC Vive, projectors // Software: Unity3D, Maya, Blender, Substance Designer, OBS.
Stephanie Mendoza is an Immersive Media Artist and Social VR Pilot. Her goals are experimenting with the design fundamentals and social implications of virtual spaces, making all attempts to share the knowledge through talks, workshops, and personal engagements. [ https://liooil.
Matt Henderson is a multidisciplinary artist melding installation art, music production, film, performance art, and virtual reality. He started a DIY performance venue and living space in Portland, OR called Xhurch which caters to the experimental artist community. After co-directing the M.A.S.S. music & performance series he became enamored with virtual reality as a robust creative medium. He organized a group of digital and new media artists under the banner of Portland Immersive Media Group and continues to explore the potential of experiential art in both real and virtual environments. [ http://xhurch.
About Portland Immersive Media Group (PIMG)
The awe-striking power of virtual reality is evident to most anyone who tries it: a visceral feeling of being immersed in a fantasy, a full body epiphany one must experience first hand to believe. For the members of PIMG, these technologies represent nascent possibilities igniting our imagination. We see them as precipitating a paradigm shift toward a new era of multi-sensory communication, with uniquely empathic, beatific, and therapeutic potential.
Offsetting this promise however are questions of access, accountability, privacy, and human transmutability: who will have means to these technologies? How will individuals be altered or compromised by their use? Will continued reliance on high-priced software and hardware result in asymmetrical communication in the metaverse? How can we avoid pitfalls and inequities of current systems when choosing a framework and rewriting rules for virtual worlds?
It’s this sort of criticality which PIMG brings to public discourse through immersive realm-building, experimentation, and visceral installations that bridge the virtual and the physical. [ http://
