A continuation of my VirtualWorld painting. The metaverse is a well-defined concept that spans experiences covering virtual, mixed, and augmented reality worlds and views. It can be accessed via VR headsets, computers, and smart phones to differing effect and as a term it’s been around since the 90’s in science fiction. With technology innovation, the level of immersion will increase, and I believe it’s still finding its way. Its already in an advantageous place with many companies developing hardware and software at an increasing rate with entertainment and business in mind so time will tell how the metaverse will grow and to where. To function it needs standards adherence to make sure different providers and experiences can be connected like the Internet. It needs to be secure and safe for people to use for long or short periods of time. It needs to learn from the way social interaction occurs online since there are consequences to the actions and decisions determined by the creators of this reality as more people connect.

This painting is a culmination of ideas and thoughts that swam around my head for six months before I put my first sketch together. From there I created VirtualWorld as a proof of concept of the elements and colours that would make up the completed work. The final piece is like a big bang of the metaverse. Different virtual worlds and experiences being created each with its own set of resources needed to run like bandwidth, people, cloud platforms and software. However, I also wanted to show that the resources can be shared. Follow the lines and you’ll see that they connect the worlds and resources together with multiple plains of realities that fit into the painting all linking together like a huge puzzle. Look closely and you can see six words that I’ve cut out of paper, glued onto the canvas, and painted over to reveal embossed thoughts that I think are important to how the metaverse develops. What I’m keen to find out is can this collection of growing quantity of worlds will eventually be made into a coherent system that will be well understood and governed?