The One and the Multiples

Creative response within the “Recreating House” section of the Home: A Suburban Obsession exhibition.

In response to the Corley Collection, this installation explored how images are shaped by perception and experience, not just visual content. Like Corley’s approach, it emphasised the need for presence to truly engage with space.

The One and the Multiples examined photography through spatial and sensory experience. It digitally deconstructed images to question how they influence us, showing that our mental construction of images is always shifting, driven by both conscious and unconscious connections.
The installation consisted of an Oculus virtual reality (VR) headset for engaging with a VR experience, and a computational abstract sculpture based on the geometry of a corner of a Queenslander house, from the same street as the VR experience.

Visitors were able to engage with the installation by using the headset to navigate through Drury Street in West End, one of the streets captured in the Corley Collection. The VR experience contained a drone-extracted 3D point cloud of the street, combined Corley Collection photos of demolished houses on the same street.

Part of the exhibition’s “Recreating House” section, The One and the Multiples
consisted of an immersive VR experience and an abstract sculpture.

The design for the abstract sculpture was based on the geometry of a corner of a
Queenslander house, from the same street as the VR experience.

The VR experience was created with a drone-extracted 3D point cloud of
Drury Street, West End, and allowed visitors to see where Corley Collection photos
of demolished houses would sit on the street.

The One and the Multiples proposed that photography remains merely a visual dialectic unless it is experienced. Using immersive and multimodal VR technology, the work suggested that digital information and photography must be grounded in experience to become a true appropriation in the construction of the image.

As a form of inquiry, The One and the Multiples revealed a dynamic philosophy by exposing the relationships between concepts and categories within the Corley Collection through an immersive digital experience.

The One and the Multiples VR experience

Research and design

Dr Frederico Fialho Teixeira, Dr Muge Belek Fialho Teixeira