The exhibition “Applied Virtualities: Extended Reality in Practice*” aimed at showing how XR technologies are opening up new paths and poses important questions about the future of our digital world. 
Through this event, Ars Electronica intended to demonstrate how the use of VR and AR can strengthen hope for a better future by opening up new paths in medicine, education, art and environmental awareness.   

But the exhibition didn’t just show how XR technologies are driving economic and technological innovation. 
How do we ensure that key technologies remain publicly accessible? 
How do we design technologies that protect and preserve our environment? 
What is the role of the individual and the group in virtual space? 
Through art, fundamental questions about the development of such technologies were posed and explored. 

The artistic project “Department of Interfaced Dimensions” was developed in the context of our hybrid residency at V2_ Lab for the Unstable Media in Rotterdam. 
Seven artists were invited to jointly explore contemporary topics such as Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Consciousness, Data Privacy and Surveillance, Simulation Theory, Existential Risk and Future of Humanity as they are raised in the 1964 SciFi-novel Simulacron-3. 

The group reflected on the creation of XR experiences with a strong creative and artistic component to create a collective experience that, in its core, considers the concepts of human interaction, group dynamics and empathy. 

The outcome of the residency, which utilised open source tools and offered guidance from experts, is “Department of Interfaced Dimensions” (D.I.D).

With the D.I.D, Annika Boll (DE), Eirini Lampiri (GR), Gökay Atabek (TR), Lam Lai (HK), Merve Sahin (TR), Mihai Gui (RO) and Silvana Callegari (CO) invites us to step into a world of play, interactivity and uncertainty. To observe, follow or collaborate with our fellow participants to navigate our way through alternative realities. 

The installation allowed the participants to Interchange roles and actively engage in a play of surveillance and manipulation.

Department of Interfaced Dimensions (D.I.D) is an interactive, mixed reality experience that combines game mechanics with virtual worlds and the materiality of kinetic props to explore themes of identity, agency and control.

All the projects selected for the exhibition aimed to illustrate the broad application of XR, while also rethinking and innovatively interpreting it. 
Which stage has the technology progressed to? 

The exhibition “Applied Virtualities: Extended Reality in Practice” invited visitors to experience and explore XR technologies, but also to engage with the ethical and social implications.  It showed that artists, as bearers of hope, continue to provide important food for thought from the beginnings of XR to the present day.   

*Source