Street Art in VR — Whangarei, NZ
Life Extension for Public Art, S2E3: The Manaia
You want your city decorated creatively, unpredictably, and with feeling? Have a Street Art Festival!
That’s what Whangarei did in 2019 and over five years later, it’s still looking great. The Manaia over on Butter Factory Lane still gets your attention. So does, ‘Butter Factory Lane.’ I like the sound of it a lot.
The Manaia is Maori. A Hybrid. Bird. Human. Fish. Since humans aren’t that good at direct communication with the Gods, unusual in-between life forms need to help. The Manaia is a messenger.
Mateus Bailon is from Sao Paulo and grew up surrounded by Brazil’s dense tropical Atlantic Forest. Now he sees it in decay. His art draws on mythological creatures and spirit forces to show humans different and better ways.
He painted, Manaia for the Festival, where he and other world class street artists produced fifteeen large-scale murals based on the theme:
Tui ate muka Tangata — Weaving the Thread of Humanity
The Manaia is a common motif in many Maori art forms, like carving and jewellery. It is versatile, taking many shapes and forms to suit the circumstances. Not a bad idea.
In the VR extension, people spawn in right in front of the Manaia, with a brief text caption below with the author’s name, location and a brief description of what a Manaia is.
Stepping in avatar form outside the Butter Factory Lane photosphere, they are in local park, near the mural. It shows the neighborhood. A short distance away, another large photosphere takes people in VR to Ross Park, a lush jungle-like area just outside of the city.
I’m learning a little bit about Whangarei by learning a little bit about its street art. Its the northernmost city in New Zealand, the first point of contact between the islands and everywhere else in the Pacific.
Tom Nickel writes about new media technologies and other topics he has little if any standing to write about, such as Street Art.
One new piece is featured weekly in VRChat, the world’s largest social VR platform that we know of, (search for ‘Street Art of the Week!’). Weekly written articles accompany the VR experience.
Tom holds a Black Belt in Learning and is a founding Board Member of the African VR Campus & Centre and a long-time supporter of the Khmer Magic Music Bus.
You can join a small but growing number of people like you who subscribe to his little gumballs of text for free on Sub-Stack.
