Giphy Arts launches VR app, the Museum of Gif Art

Giphy has launched the Museum of Gif Art, a VR app where viewers can explore a digital gallery of animated artworks. The project follows on from its Loop Dreams exhibition held in New York last year, which used VR, holographic posters and large scale projections to display gif artworks.

The Museum of Gif Art (MoGA) app aims to bring this to a wider audience, whereby users can explore the multi-room virtual gallery through an iPhone, Android or HTC Vive device. The rooms are designed as various scenes, ranging from a dark archive where the artworks lit by virtual torchlight, to a vivid pink interior where the works can be viewed through the windows.

Artists such as Julian Glander, Phyllis Ma, Stuart Wade, Laura Brothers and Martin Onassis are featured among the 20-strong roster, showing artworks only seen before at the Loop Dreams show.

“Exploring visual experiences is essential with digital art,” says Ari Spool, curator for the Giphy Arts platform. “[We’re] eager to see things in exciting contexts divorced from the wall-mounted screen or projector. VR allows for new concepts around scale and environment to be explored.”