Victoria Miro, a leading contemporary art gallery, has unveiled an innovative digital platform that brings the gallery's exhibitions online through advanced technology. The new platform, called Live / Archive, combines 3D modeling, augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR) to create an immersive digital experience. According to the gallery's launch statement, this makes Victoria Miro the first gallery to fully integrate these cutting-edge technologies across all its activities, including a comprehensive archive of past exhibitions.
The Live / Archive platform features digital twins of the most recent exhibitions from the gallery's locations in Islington, north London, and near Piazza San Marco in Venice. The initial launch includes 72 archived shows spanning nearly six years of exhibition history. This technological milestone coincides with a major anniversary for the gallery – Victoria Miro first opened her doors on Cork Street in central London 40 years ago in 1985.
Oliver Miro, partner at Victoria Miro, described the platform's significance in the gallery's launch statement: "Live / Archive represents a leap forward in how art is experienced in the digital age. We're excited to be at the forefront of adopting new technologies that not only expand our reach but also significantly reduce carbon emissions associated with traditional art viewing."
The archive collection spans from this year's exhibitions back to "Grayson Perry: Super Rich Interior Decoration," which ran from September 5 to December 20, 2019. This exhibition, featuring the artist's paintings and ceramic works, notably closed just before the COVID-19 pandemic began. The timing proved fortuitous for the development of digital gallery experiences.
Live / Archive operates on Vortic, a specialized platform for online exhibitions in 3D, AR, and VR that Oliver Miro launched in March 2020. The timing was remarkably prescient, as commercial galleries worldwide soon needed new ways to connect with buyers during pandemic restrictions including social distancing, remote work, and severely limited travel.
Since 2020, Vortic's capabilities have evolved dramatically, as evidenced by Live / Archive's cinematic-quality user experience and sophisticated handling of light and shadow. The platform optimizes navigation routes through 3D exhibitions using the latest artificial intelligence tools, reflecting Oliver Miro's long-term strategic vision. Vortic was built using custom software specifically designed for art exhibitions rather than relying on standard gaming engines like Unity or Unreal, with primary focus on superior object and image capture and display quality.
The Vortic development team strategically anticipated improvements in viewer experience across browsers, mobile devices, and VR headsets. The platform is available in app stores for industry-leading Meta and Apple headsets, with the advantage that galleries won't need to create new 3D models of artworks to match advancing hardware capabilities.
"We want it to feel like a really core part of the gallery," Oliver Miro explained to The Art Newspaper regarding Live / Archive. "We're working with the artists, really closely, on not only the physical show but the digital twin of the show." He revealed that the platform serves as "an advanced planning tool for the exhibitions. So pretty much every exhibition now we hang the show in the [virtual] space months before" the physical installation.
Artists represented by Victoria Miro have embraced the technology enthusiastically. Chantal Joffe commented in the launch statement: "It's so brilliant as an artist to be able to revisit paintings that are maybe scattered all over the world and you don't get to see them again. I can pop back and walk around some of my old shows which is great. The tech is getting better and better all the time, so it's exciting to see this new iteration. Also, I can try out ideas for hanging an exhibition, so that when we come to physically installing, much of the thinking and moving things around has been done virtually."
One of the platform's newest creative features is a "curve editor" tool that enables the gallery team to generate video walkthroughs of virtual exhibitions featuring 3D captures of paintings and sculptures, eliminating the need for professional videographers. This tool represents another step toward making high-quality exhibition documentation more accessible and cost-effective.
Oliver Miro and his team particularly celebrate the developing fidelity with which Live / Archive can reproduce light reflections off objects, walls, and floors. Whether enhancing a sculpture's three-dimensionality, capturing the shine on a glitter ball, or showing the haunting reflections of Paula Rego's canvases from "The Forgotten" exhibition (November 19, 2021 - February 12, 2022) in the polished concrete floor of Victoria Miro's main London space, the platform demonstrates remarkable attention to lighting details.
The Live / Archive experience emphasizes what renowned British architect Edwin Lutyens called the "fall of light," echoing advice that 20th-century architectural giant Louis Kahn gave to students at Pratt Institute in New York during the 1960s. Kahn's guidance, which inspired visionary artist, playwright, and designer Robert Wilson among others, was simple yet profound: "Students, start with light." This philosophy clearly influences the sophisticated lighting reproduction that makes Live / Archive's virtual exhibitions so compelling and realistic.
