This project examines the role of virtual reality in spatial design, examining how this technology not only influences but changes the way that designers, architects, and artists model objects, perceive and understand space. To test the full capabilities of virtual reality, we undertook a virtual modeling of an illustration by eighteenth-century Italian artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi.

Piranesi’s Le Carceri d’invenzione – Prison of invention (also known as The Imaginary Prisons) is a series of 16 etchings, first published as a volume in 1750 and held in the University of Melbourne’s Rare Book collection.

We were able to bring to life in 3D the 2D spaces of Piranesi’s Imaginary Prison, which scholars had previously thought could not feasibly exist as real, constructible spaces.

NGV Podcast: https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/exhibition_post/vr-gesturing-re-imagining-piranesi/