Projects
2022 · Zero Latency VR
Montreal, Quebec
Near Montréal’s Jean-Talon Market, I painted a small vestibule for Zero Latency VR.
Tucked away from direct public view, the entrance offered a compact space to work with. Loose characters, dry-brush textures and a restrained palette animate its surfaces.
A small portal, on the way to somewhere else. Seriously.
There was something fitting about making a hand-painted entrance to a virtual reality venue.
Beyond the doors, visitors would enter environments built through digital technology. Here, brush marks remained visible, and the stucco gave the paint a texture of its own. Shifting light caught the uneven surface.
I liked that visitors would pass through this visibly handmade space before entering a simulated one.
Latency describes the delay between an action and its response.
The word also spoke to my circumstances. During the years surrounding this project, severe autoimmune illness had substantially reduced my capacity to paint. Large walls had become difficult to take on; some projects were beyond what I could physically manage.
Though the desire to work remained, my body could not always follow.
This was one of the few murals I completed during that period.
A small space in which I could give an idea form at a time when doing so was far from assured.
The brush marks carry something of that effort for me.
A modest wall, and the possibility of movement.
© Jason Botkin