Artist Statement

Super Spectacular is an interactive narrative created to be experienced on a stereoscopic virtual reality display system. The virtual environment created in this artwork consists of buildings (a sports arena and factory) and interactive characters created from black and white drawings developed by the artist. Super Spectacular places the user in a world characterized by the cycles of work, leisure, production and consumption. For the user to fully experience and explore this environment they in essence must engage in the processes associated with these cycles.

• Tim Portlock. Since his early days as a public artist, muralist and painter, Tim Portlock has described the cultural changes taking place within large (post)industrial cities and continues to explore the shifting cityscape in his digital work. Currently Portlock’s formal interests are in the overlap between the aesthetic vocabulary of traditional art media, such as painting, and digital art making practice. His work has appeared in the version02 show at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), As Electronics (Linz, Austria), Gdansk, Poland, COSlGN (Amsterdam), among others. Before working digitally, Portlock was a painter and large-scale muralist, and this background informs his current work. As a digital artist, he has worked on virtual heritage projects such as Virtual Harlem and as the lead designer on the Dusable Project, an art work that combines non-linear story telling, traditional theater and virtual realty set design. Portlock is also a professor teaching digital art at Columbia College, Chicago, Illinois, USA.