The Digital Museum of Digital Art is a museum dedicated to the promotion of virtual reality as an exhibition infrastructure and artistic medium. It was conceived in 2013 by artists Alfredo Salazar-Caro and William Robertson, egress from Chicago’s dirty new media scene.
As an institution native to that creative community, DiMoDA operates closely within its networks, seeking to involve its participants by means of new work commissions. At the same time, the Museum leverages its own character as an artistic endeavor in order to operate more fluidly and establish strategic partnerships.
Just like the works it shows, DiMoDA exists first and foremost as a computer simulation. Its fabulous building, partly inspired by the uses of the Unity 3D game engine for audiovisual performance, could hardly exist otherwise. It is the perfect example of a piece of architecture that makes full use of virtuality for spatial fabrication – architecture made not only to contain artifacts but also to provide sensorial extravagance.
Since its first show, organized in 2015 in partnership with the New York gallery Transfer, DiMoDA has been through four different versions. Each of them presents its own selection of works and takes place independently of the others, as a software application to be downloaded or shown in an installation format.
Even in its in real life configurations, DiMoDA does not deny its own technological condition, embracing the multicolored LED aesthetics characteristic of domestic PCs compatible with virtual reality systems, almost exclusively dedicated to the gamer audience.