Oculus Rift will change the world, but can it change art?

Visitors to a new exhibition in London can confront monsters and wander woods in a dark, scary virtual reality world. But it’s not the art that’s astonishing – it’s the technology itself

I am walking down a dark and scary tunnel. If I turn my head, a headtorch illuminates the moist, rough walls of the narrow passage. Then I emerge in a wood. I turn my head to see a strange biomorphic statue behind me. Everything is real here, but none of it is real at all. The woods, the tunnel, the sculpture are completely three-dimensional and as I look around, the view changes as it does in real life. My headtorch picks out new, detailed bits of earth or bark, or a menacing shadow. This is exactly like walking in the world. But it is all an illusion.

I take off the headgear. I’m back in an art gallery. Canadian artist Jon Rafman has created the surreal landscape I just explored with Oculus Rift, the headset that is expected to make virtual reality commercially real when it is put on the market. It’s worth visiting Rafman’s exhibition to get a free taste of this astonishing new stage in the digital revolution. Back in the early 90s, everyone thought virtual reality was about to take over the world. No film was complete without someone wearing a visored helmet and waving their arm about like a fool. But it turned out to be the internet that changed the world, while games simply turned to Renaissance perspective to make the flat expanse of a screen seem deep and spacious.

Related: Oculus Rift virtual reality headset will ship in early 2016

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