Look Beyond the Flowers

Jan 2023
Done in collaboration with Sanjushrree Subash Guided by Tal Haring, during an exchange semester at HIT, Israel

+ Virtual Exhibition
+ VR Design
+ Unity

How might we design memorable interactions within a virtual environment, and re-imagine how exhibitions could look?

Look Beyond the Flowers is a virtual exhibition designed as a celebration and tribute to one of the most thought provoking contemporary artists, Takashi Murakami. We have created an immersive experience of the fantastical scenes that populate his technicolour world - a carnival of the vivid Japanese popular culture that he has inspired.

The project involved visualising 2D graphics into a 3D environment while paying attention to aspects of gamification, navigation and interaction. This resulted in a playful worldbuilding exercise, where we re-imagined how each element of the virtual environment could be appropriated to showcase the artistic vision behind the variety of work, from a Japanese house adorned with his fine art paintings to a pixel cube display of his recent NFT work.

︎ Walkthrough of the playable experience

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The virtual exhibition we designed, Look Beyond the Flowers, is a spin on this claim to fame and promises to let the viewers experience his work of art like never before.
Unifying many strands of culture that are frequently considered in opposition—Murakami’s work blends traditional Japanese painting with Western influences.

Popular for introducing the smiley flower into mainstream media, his symbols come from deeper impulses rooted in cultural past.

Spatial planning  ︎︎︎
Identifying how to curate the artworks, exhibits to showcase them in, and the overall terrain mapping of the experience.

︎︎︎  3D modelling assets on blender 

︎︎︎  Designing the scenes on Unity