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Art World

What is Blind Burners Art World?

Visit our Art Park in the Black Rock Desert. You’ll experience audio-described Photographs and Art, and some video Performances. Arriving at our Visitor Centre, you’ll meet your guide Nish. Nish will guide you through our Garden of Forking Paths, where you can choose to visit our Art Villa, or our Outdoors Gallery. We’re currently hosting our first group exhibition ‘Burning Bright With Not Much Sight’. The exhibition features work by four artists: Ebony Rose Dark, Fenbi, Marimuthu, and Dust Devil.

Art World Screenshot Gallery

  • Futuristic building with a canvas canopy set in a desert environment, with golden sands and a bright blue sky. In the distance we can see a modern building in white stone.
  • Notice board in the desert that shows text that reads, Our World has two galleries. Both galleries include the same artworks arranged in a different setting and with different sounds. This is an experiment in gallery design and how we experience art.
  • White concrete borders split into two paths. An AR avatar stands waiting, surrounded by meadow flowers, with mountains in the distance, set against mountains and a bright blue sky.
  • Futuristic building in white stone with three different floors. The blind burners logo featuring a burning eye symbol sits at the top of the building with the words 'Burning Bright with not much sight' above the building entrance. An LGBTQ flag is on the wall to the left of the entrance.
  • Inside of a white stone building gallery space with nine artworks by Ebony Rose Dark. On the wall are various notice boards and a large sign that reads 'Thank You Larry'.
  • Inside a gallery space with white walls there are signs that read 'All of the Pronouns' and 'Ebony Rose Dark'. An image of a drag queen is also featured alongside text boards that describe the artwork. To the left of the image we can see out of the gallery entrance into the desert, with mountains and blue sky in the distance.
  • Inside a gallery space showing various artworks by the artist Fenbi, including a self-portrait in the foreground. A black sign with white text reads 'The Creature's Journey'.
  • On the roof of a white stone art gallery in the desert. Artwork by Marimuthu, including a photo of the artists are shown.
  • Rooftop gallery space with various photos of rural Indian landscapes and the reverse of the Blind Burners logo, featuring a burning eye.

Burning Bright With Not Much Sight

Blind Burners’ first group exhibition features four of artists. To explore their work, please click the showcase gallery links below.

Fenbi

Fenbi - Butterfly

Fenbi aka Lx Electric aka Liam Mercer (they/them) is a multi-disciplinary artist, performer, activist and therapist. They served as stage manager, lighting designer, writer and collective member of the ‘Sex Worker’s Opera’ company, and previously worked as a lighting and audio technician at the legendary Royal Vauxhall Tavern.

Browse Gallery & Profile

Ebony Rose Dark

Ebony Rose Dark - Dancer

Mickel Smithen AKA Ebony Rose Dark (‘all of the pronouns!’) is a photographer, choreographer and performance artist. Mickel studied performing arts majoring in music and dance at the Royal National College for the Blind, Hereford.

Browse Gallery & Profile

Mari Muthu

Mari Muthu - I Stand Tall

Marimuthu is a photographer, poet and writer. He is currently teaching and studying for his PhD in English literature. His doctoral thesis examines depictions of blindness in apocalyptic fiction. His Masters thesis reviewed the autobiographical comedy of Trevor Noah and Maz Jobrani. 

Browse Gallery & Profile

Dust Devil

Angelina Zhang AKA Dust Devil

Angelina Zhang AKA Dust Devil grew up in Gansu and Shanxi Province.
During lockdown she contributed several live performance art pieces to Blind Burners’ online parties.
She recently moved from Shanghai’s art district M50 to New York City.

Browse Gallery & Profile

Art World Zones

THE VISITOR CENTRE

A simple bamboo-framed tent protecting you from the elements. You’ll be met by your guide Nish. Nish will introduce you to the technique of navigating by sound. She’ll be your guide through most of Art World, reading out audio descriptions, and providing directions to help you navigate by sound. The Visitor Centre has a ‘low humming flute’ sound which may help you to find it. From the Visitor Centre, you can walk to the Garden of Forking Paths, which makes a ‘soaring flute melody’ sound.

GARDEN OF FORKING PATHS

An expansive garden filled with flowers and birds, and rich musical textures. Nisha will meet you again at the centre of the Garden. From there, you may follow Birdsong towards the Art Villa, or running water, towards the Outdoor Gallery, which has a fountain near its entrance.

THE ART VILLA

Our Art Villa is a traditional gallery building. A graceful design by Whitt Sellars, with three levels standing tall in the Black Rock Desert. Each level is rectangular. Level One is reached through a central entrance. The upper levels are accessed by a ramp system along the right side of the building. Level Three is the roof terrace.

THE OUTDOOR GALLERY

When imagining the possibilities for this Art World, we knew that navigating a complex building like our Art Villa through musical sounds would be challenging. So we asked the question: what if we arranged our art in a straight line, so that we could walk straight through to hear the audio descriptions? How might it feel to walk through a gallery from beginning to end, without worrying too much about getting lost or hitting sharp corners? Might it look cool for light-dependent folk to see our photographs and our art framed as polaroid photos, lined up against the desert backdrop? And what if we wanted to skip from one artist to another without walking through the whole exhibition?

So we made copies of all our art, and placed it outdoors, arranged in a straight line. We added some elegant white guardrails to stop us wandering off into the desert. And we innovated a “conveyor platform” that takes visitors outbound from one section to the next, and inbound all the way back to the start. It turns out if you stretch out an art exhibition in a straight line it could reach the edge of what’s possible in Altspace, about 1000 metres.

The link to our Art World on AltspaceVR is here. You can also find the world by entering code ‘ZRA343’ in the Altspace world finder.

For further information about navigation by sound, please click here for our guide.

Ready to jump aboard?

Our Art World and our Playa Experience are built in Unity and hosted on the Altspace platform. These worlds can be accessed currently via VR headsets, PC or Mac.

Altspace’ sign-in, avatar creation and in-game menus are NOT accessible to screen readers. As such, it’s necessary for blind and partially sighted users to book an appointment to walk you through the setup.

Please click here for information about onboarding, or complete our enquiry form to book your onboarding appointment.

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A world filled with the power and wisdom of visually impaired creativity.