Rachel Rossin

Self-taught programmer and painter Rachel Rossin works at the forefront of the artistic medium of virtual reality. In 2015, she was a fellow at New Inc., the New Museum incubator dedicated to collaboration across art, design and technology. Her works merge images from internet sources, such as video games and stock computer illustration, with real-life objects to create abstract virtual spaces. These seemingly impossible juxtapositions construct immersive landscapes and still lives, which blend together as if they were imploding in space.

The creative processes around her paintings and virtual reality experiences greatly intertwine. Through the use of photogrammetry, she first transforms oil paintings into virtual environments and algorithmically alters their composition. Rossin then re-interprets these spaces into abstract paintings. She finally translates them into virtual reality as 2D textures wrapped around the original 3D meshes.

The work, I Came and Went as a Ghost Hand (Cycle 2, 2015), brings the viewer inside a world of fragmented images taken from Rossin’s everyday life, her home, studio and paintings. Users are floating in space, encountering sculptural and architectural objects in a disembodied almost ghost-like manner.