Common Grounds
Workspace Unlimited / 2007 / Canada / Bélgium
Unlike the fantasy realms of multi-player 3D gaming environments, the game engine-based virtual architectures of Workspace Unlimited are conceptually tied to, and situated within, real places. For the LABoral Centre for Art and Creative Industries, Workspace Unlimited's Thomas Soetens, Kora Van den Bulcke and their collaborators have created a site-specific extension of the Gameworld exhibition space that also connects visitors, via the control of a life-sized avatar, to three other sites. Each of these sites – the Society for Art and Technology in Montreal, the V2 Institute for the Unstable Media in Rotterdam, and the Art Nouveau building of Vooruit, a performance venue in Gent – hosts its own corresponding site-specific installation from the artists. Together these sites form what the artists call the “Common Grounds” platform. With Common Grounds, Workspace Unlimited anticipates a time when game world and real world are fused into a single, seamless architecture of experience.
