This week Bay published a new long-form article for Right Click Save magazine on “The Metaverse as a Radical Medium“. Sincere thanks to RCS Editor-In-Chief Alex Estorick who encouraged Bay to write the piece and supported its development. Additional thanks to spatial computing expert Damir First and author-futurist Theo Priestley who provided invaluable perspectives.

You can read the full article at rightclicksave.com/article/the-metaverse-as-a-radical-medium-virtual-worlds

“We find ourselves at a precipice in digital creation, overlooking an emergent virtual art form that synthesizes the urgency of the happening with the borderless inclusivity of multiplayer gaming. This evolving genre is rooted in the real-world experiential art of collectives like TeamLab and Meow Wolf. Yet today’s new builders, taking the metaverse as their medium, aspire to create experiences that transcend the physical, moving beyond worldbuilding into something meaningful and social. 

With the metaverse gold rush fading to a pre-AI dream and spatial computing on the horizon, a new vanguard of creators is filling the virtual worlds that the speculators have left behind. 

In 2023, their work gained a foothold in the wider art world, as evidenced by exhibitions such as “Worldbuilding: Gaming and Art in the Digital Age” at the Centre Pompidou-Metz and “Collective Worldbuilding — Art in the Metaverse” at HEK, Basel. Yet the model of worldbuilding as a meticulous creation of believable, alternative realities does not fully express the vision of this new art movement, whose conversations go beyond the construction of 3D environments to embrace the nature of collective virtual experience, shared memory, and communal narrative.”