Running the Only Art Museum in the Universe, or Two Hours in Occupy White Walls
Nailing the virtual art gallery is hard; OWW is doing a docent job.
I’m standing in my bird mask at the threshold of my art museum, looking outside at the cosmos. Purple nebulae stretch forever below. Above, great gaseous plumes range from rose to Renaissance celestial gold. If I’m being honest, the view outside the window is a lot more striking than the dim, spare Art Deco interior of my museum. This doesn’t reflect well on your humble curator, especially since my museum is the only building in the universe. I cycle through some other sky options: Northern Lights (too majestic), Desert (looks like the Mexican sequences from the movie Traffic), Night Sky 4 (causes too many interior shadows). I settle on humanity’s perennial favorite: Sunny Day. Finally, the white walls and obsidian floors of my museum feel clean, expansive, and modern in the neutral light of an eternal afternoon.
I rather enjoy wearing a bird mask, and my architectural instincts fall somewhere between Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and M.C. Escher’s interiors.
I am the architect, docent, preparator, benefactor, and sole curator of this nameless museum floating in the void. Two hours ago, I booted up the early alpha version of a video game called Occupy White Walls (stylized OWW), from London game developer StikiPixels. Since then, I have learned that I should not be in charge of an institutional budget, I rather enjoy wearing a bird mask, and my architectural instincts fall somewhere between Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and M.C. Escher’s interiors.
OWW is a video game pruned of most simulators’ gamiest trappings — there are no spreadsheets, fatigue meters, or personnel considerations. OWW is less game and more virtual art gallery. If you download it (which you can do here for free), you’ll find yourself with a choice between using a fully-formed museum (baroque, classical, or modern) and making a ramshackle chimera like I did. After you choose your starting structure, you will be a pleasantly rough-hewn mannequin standing on a plane in infinite space, ready to materialize your vision. (You do have a limited budget, but it’s very generous. This budget is OWW’s only real video gamesque limitation, and besides keeping you from building a server-crashing colossal ziggurat, it cleverly fuels the next stage of your museum career, as you’ll see below.)
You will be a pleasantly rough-hewn mannequin standing on a plane in infinite space. (In the game.)
Once your warm, welcoming museum space (or labyrinth of shadows and dead ends) is polished, you’re ready to start acquiring some art. You’ll flip through pages of 18th and 19th century works by people from around the globe, nine at a time. Click on a painting that intrigues you, and you’ll get a full-screen presentation of it, along with its title, artist, real life dimensions, medium, and date on the screen’s right side.
If you’ve always wanted browsing gallery pieces to be more like Facebook, look no further than the left side of the screen, where you can find a string of comments from other users, which you can Like or Dislike. On the whole, these comments are an echelon above typical anonymous online fare. They resemble missives overheard in real galleries, and I found myself charmed by them. (“I have a friend that is color blind and this is what every day looks like.”)
Crucially, the art catalog is not searchable; you simply see nine unrelated pieces at a time, buy some or don’t, and get another (seemingly random) sampling. Creator StikiPixels boasts of sophisticated AI behind this presentation. I didn’t see an Amazon-creepy level of psychic prowess behind its suggestions just yet, but the potential is certainly there. Such a system could be an inroad for people who love visual art but haven’t yet become familiar with its landmark names and styles.
According to the FAQ on its website, OWW players will ultimately be able to upload their own art to the game and have virtual museum owners “buy” it for their collections. One hopes StikiPixels is working on a plan to prevent a catalog of Pepe the Frog memes.
Some of your patrons will be pink wireframes, some blue pointillist sketches come to life; all will be power walking erratically.
As people flock to your collection of Gilded Age portraits and Kardashian sketches, you will earn a virtual admission fee from each visitor. And golly, will your first visitors arrive in startling fashion. Hang your first Monet, and a purple vortex opens nearby (rupturing your solitude with such sound and force as to be genuinely startling). Patrons will come streaming through this vortex. Some of these patrons will be pink wireframes, some blue pointillist sketches come to life; all will be power walking erratically. Many of these patrons will be AI constructs, but only human visitors will provide the in-game money that can be used for more art or a second floor.
The bulk of my freshly constructed second floor is dedicated to sumi-e, or suibokuga — Japanese ink wash painting. (Mostly 18th century, but that’s not a firm curatorial rule. Make me an offer.) I had just hung Yi Yuwon’s Plum Branch (1888, hanging scroll; ink on paper) when a procession of fidgety phantoms came marching through the portal, scratching what passes for their chins, musing with crossed arms, and dancing. Dancing? Yes. Evidently, nothing sets some people’s feet skipping like late 18th century Japanese impressionism. These sashaying neon stick figures were not piloted by people…I don’t think. But then, how would I know? No matter your gallery’s chosen collection, you’ll be trafficking in surrealism.
Occupy White Walls (and other contenders in the virtual museum space) may do more than make you a taste magnate in the matrix. It could evolve into a more cumbersome Etsy. Perhaps it will familiarize new audiences with visual art across the ages. It may one day house a scale facsimile of the MSU Broad Art Museum, with digital versions of its current exhibitions. One thing is certain: It will be infiltrated by memes. But perhaps a 16-year-old scholar of meme culture will collect and organize them by topic and year, building wing after wing, until any citizen of the Internet can visit his Louvre of Memes and marvel or despair, to taste. What, if not that, is the essence of a museum?
Greg Teachout is the Editor of MSU Broad Angles, the official Medium publication of the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University.
