“BRIDGING WORLDS” IN THE MARO DORI SKY PALACE

Maro Dori Sky Palace is one of the architectural wonders of the Spatial Metaverse. This celestial gallery showcases the imaginary, noble bird Maro Dori, a creation of a special, young Japanese artist Michiko, paired with the captivating, seasonal Kyoto photos of Fumio Kojima.  The result is a blend of tradition and modernity. 

This beautiful, virtual environment features floating bridges that allow users to walk through a sequence of gallery spaces and connect with others along the way.  

Imagine my excitement when I was invited to have a solo exhibition in one of the galleries.

Many of you know that I love architecture and spent many years photographing the architecture of Dubai, so to be invited to exhibit in this architecturally unique Japanese virtual space was very special. 

Because of the many floating bridges in the space and because I believe that architecture is in itself a bridge, as it has the ability to move people emotionally, I was inspired to call this exhibition, “Bridging Worlds”. 

My artworks in this exhibition feature people from various parts of the world, and invite us to walk in the shoes of those who have worldviews different to our own.  We are invited to bridge our differences and instead realize our similarities and our interconnectedness..

The figures in the artworks invite us to follow them and move along a bridge from the outer world to the inner world of contemplation. As much as there is a sense of stillness in movement in the artworks, there is also a  sense of movement into stillness.

The exhibition is also a celebration of the many bridges that I have already crossed on my explorations in the metaverse.

My collaboration with the Japanese community in Spatial has enabled us to bridge language barriers by researching and discovering modern speech to text technology. 

As a result of implementing this technology which facilitates communication, people who are hard of hearing are now able to feel fully included in the metaverse. Different speaking communities in the metaverse are also communicating more easily with each other, uniting us all. 

Time zones are no longer a barrier as the metaverse has encouraged us to bridge this challenge.

Many of our artworks are both physical and digital, the metaverse being the bridge to the phygital.

Someone expressed to me recently that the metaverse is a bridge which enables them to be both social in the virtual realm and yet solitary in the physical realm at the same time. 

As we continue to connect in the metaverse we are building bridges.  Dr Judi Harris put it so beautifully:

“When I see cyberspace, I see bridges.  Perhaps I should say I see people, building bridges in cyberspace.  Not bridges of steel, not even electronic bridges, but bridges of ideas that span the miles of physical space, cross the generations and connect people who would otherwise be unlikely ever to meet.” 

You, dear reader, are invited to join me in the Maro Dori Sky Palace and to cross bridges you had not before thought were possible. 

Bridging Worlds: 1 April 2024 - 31 May 2024

A Japanese version of this blog post has been published here.

There will be a cherry blossom viewing and exhibition celebration on 1 April 2024 at 10PM JST/9AM EST/3PM CET in Ambient Canvas. Experience a Japanese style hangout with Koto music, before joining me on a journey to "Bridging Worlds".