VR Playground returns from a short tour in Seoul, South Korea. Week one was by official invitation from World Culture Collage, to feature as part of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics 2018 cultural programme. I was delighted to site our four swings within the stunning new Oil Tank Culture Park…
… and our team had great fun entertaining Olympic mascots Soohorang (white tiger) and Bandabi (Asiatic black bear).
Week two was by invitation of British Council, Korea, to participate in the Connected City programme of city-wide architectural interventions, as part of the 2017 Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism. This time, our installation was sited against the amazing backdrop of Zaha Hadid’s futuristic Dongdaemun Design Plaza .
And it was at this location that VR Playground hit its 10,000th rider!
From young to old, our audience – which included tourists from China and a few wandering souls from Europe – brought a great spirit of adventure and fun, and were happy to enjoy VR Playground as hybrid visual artwork and public performance, but also simply as entertainment fit for the 21st century.
Inspired by their reactions and responses, I conducted a few impromptu post-ride interviews c/o my iPhone.
None of this would have been possible without our fantastic team of staff and volunteers at both locations. Super smart: always smiling, professional, and thoroughly engaged in the project and our audience. Special thanks to our interpreter Kay Jang (pictured above at the Oil Tank Culture Park), who took time out as personal translator to Britney Spears to join our team.
Both engagements were expertly facilitated by Producer Group DOT who also arranged for four swing sets to be produced in Seoul under my design direction. I certainly want to go back to South Korea with this, and future projects; possibly using Seoul as my geographic and creative base camp for a further-reaching tour of South/east Asia.
