Metaverses in our life
Today everybody talks about Metaverse. “Metaverse” became a household word when Facebook rebranded its corporate identity to Meta in October 2021 and announced plans to invest at least $10 billion in the concept that year. In addition to Meta, tech giants including Google, Microsoft, Nvidia and Qualcomm are also investing billions of dollars in the concept. Management consultancy McKinsey & Company has bullishly predicted that the metaverse economy could reach $5 trillion by 2030.
Companies use this term to refer to many different types of enhanced online environments. These range from online video games to virtual workplaces and virtual dressing rooms.
What is metaverse?
The metaverse is a single, shared, immersive, persistent, 3D virtual space where humans experience life in ways they could not in the physical world. Broadly speaking, however, the metaverse is a digital ecosystem built on various kinds of 3D technology, real-time collaboration software and blockchain-based decentralized finance tools. There are two technologies considered important to the development: virtual reality and augmented reality.
Virtual reality is a simulated 3D environment that enables users to interact with virtual surrounding in a way that approximates reality as perceived through our senses. Usually this approximation happen through a VR headset.
Augmented reality is an interactive experience that combines the real world and computer generated content. AR is less immersive than VR. The primary value of augmented reality is the manner in which components of the digital world blend into a person’s perception of the real world, not as a simple display of data, but through the integration of immersive sensations, which are perceived as natural parts of an environment. The game Pokémon Go is an early example of AR.
Metaverses in a business world
The metaverse is becoming important because it offers a new way for businesses to communicate and collaborate with users from anywhere in the world virtually. From small businesses to larger companies, every brand can step into the virtual world and reap the benefits of having a presence there. Businesses are already using augmented reality and virtual reality to provide experiences for consumers and engage them in ways they have never done before. When a new Star Wars movie premiered in Japan, clothing retailer H&M set up a designer booth in their Tokyo store. Shoppers could put on Magic Leap augmented reality glasses to turn plain black t-shirts into customized apparel that they could actually take home with them. More and more consumers will be interested in purchasing NFT garments that mirror physical clothing and accessories.
Other companies are finding ways to use ARAR -2.5% and VR to enable customers to try on or try out their merchandise. Luxury car company Ferrari, for example, showcases their models in augmented reality, so car shoppers can “walk” around the cars and even delve into the cars’ engines and braking systems.
Metaverses in art
VR and AR technologies are actively evolving in the art industry. Art has always had a role in pushing the frontier of modernity into new and exciting domains. From the giants of the Renaissance to the impressionists and futurists, artists have created new ways of seeing the world. They have also embraced new mediums and new technologies to bring their vision to life.
Every year in Dubai, the exhibition Art Dubai passes. Last year the fair launched the Art Dubai Digital section to “examine the context out of which NFTs, cryptocurrency, video art and virtual reality (VR) have grown since the rise of digital art in the 1980s, including those who are leading the way in the rapidly expanding digital arts space”, a statement says. Seventeen galleries and platforms presented works in this section. The NFT curatorial platform MORROW Collective, which was founded in the NFT boom time of March 2021, showed pieces by 35 artists with prices ranging from 0.8ETH to 10ETH (£1,800-£23,000; non-crypto prices may be higher). Emergeast, an online gallery dedicated to emerging and mid-career artists from the Middle East and North Africa, was also taking part in the digital section with works priced from 0.8ETH to 8ETH (£1,800-£18.000). One of the works on show is CarpETHereum (2021) by Mazyar Kamkar and Reza Vojdani, showing an Ethereum currency sign wrapped in a Persian carpet — an ode to the birth of Web 3.0 in the Middle East.
GAZELL.iO, the digital arm of Gazelli Art House, also showed carpet-inspired works by the artist Orkhan Mammadov. Singularity in Heritage, part of the Revival of Aesthetics series, uses an artificial intelligence algorithm to collect Middle Eastern carpet designs to produce generative “imaginary” patterns.
Art Dubai 2023 will be provided from 1st to 5th March 2023,
Last year in Dubai Museum of the Future was opened, where immersive technology lets visitors time travel to the year 2071 and explore space. There is a showcase “Tomorrow Today”. Made in collaboration with strategic and public partners from around the world, this exhibition explores how designers, researchers and corporations are responding today to our most urgent challenges.
Galleries generally feature a mix of 2D art hanging on a wall as well as 3D objects. Objects are clickable for a detail view that usually leads to an NFT marketplace as well as to relevant social media channels.
Metaverses in fashion
Virtual verses are evolving and in the field of fashion, Last year was provided Metaverse Fashion Week. It received far more industry attention than any digital fashion event before it. Virtual real estate platform Decentraland jumped at the opportunity to recruit fashion brands and fans to its blockchain-based platform for the four-day event. The series of fashion-focused events attracted a wide variety of brands and creatives, including Etro, Dundas, Dolce & Gabbana and Estée Lauder. Still, some notable players in the metaverse, including Gucci and Ralph Lauren, did not participate. The entire experience was blockchain-based, created on land sold as NFTs and digital fashion bought and worn as NFTs. The mood of the event was fun and joyful, enabling experiences that would not have been possible physically. Cats, in place of models, walked the Dolce & Gabbana catwalk. All of the models on the Unxd-curated runway could fly after emerging out of model-sized blooming lotuses, and walked in a vast venue that resembled an Olympics opening ceremony arena with music-coordinated light shows to match. An after-party from Hogan included a dance-off, and each attendee could programme their avatar to dance using a customisable series of moves, regardless of footwear or outfit limitations.
For some consumers, digital fashion is a natural extension of applying social media filters on platforms such as Instagram and Snapchat, says Simon Windsor, cofounder and joint managing director at Dimension Studio, an agency that worked with Balenciaga on its video game.
For the fashion world, NFTs can be used to authenticate products or serve as collectible pieces in their own right. And in the past years, there was a wave of engagement, particularly among luxury players and via the gaming universe. Louis Vuitton launched a video game with collectible NFTs, partially designed by Beeple, for its 200th anniversary.
