John Whall – Passage To PlayLAND – QUAD Gallery

Passage to PlayLAND brings together two exciting interactive and family-friendly immersive installations from Derby based digital artist John Whall.

PlayLAB and PlayLAND are shared, playful experiences that invite the gallery visitor to fully engage with the physical space and to consider their local environment. Both projects were commissioned and originally exhibited at LEVEL Centre, Rowsley, and have been adapted for QUAD.

In PlayLAB audiences explore how we create play through the imaginative process of experimenting with the things around us, before being taken to the world of outdoor play in PlayLAND, where the artist invites you to play, sense and immerse yourself in a relaxing playful world. Passage to PlayLAND incorporates participant made artwork and performance and includes participants from LEVEL Centre’s LEVEL Makes and Youth Collective community groups.

Passage to PlayLAND celebrates a decade of John Whall’s artistic journey to bring community made artwork to gallery audiences through high quality digital experiences. Utilising projection and game engine technology, the work fuses participatory practice with immersive digital interactive installations that puts our everyday creativity on show for all to enjoy.

John Whall Biography
John Whall is a multi-award winning Digital Participation Artist, Curator and Producer who uses digital tools and materials to creatively engage audiences with arts and contemporary culture. His work is a fusion of digital and participatory practice, through collaborative and co-creative processes, with a focus on creating together. This involves translating complex digital practice into accessible creative activities, which inspire and empower audiences in the creation of immersive experience.

John’s work also includes exploring participatory practice through our conscious experiences of online and offline immersive creative spaces. Aligned with phenomenological philosophies and the basic intentional structure of consciousness. He is intrigued by how our first-person perspectives of collaborative physical and online spaces can allow us to explore our individual conscious experiences and their relationship to others.

John is passionate about developing high quality digital experiences that champion the diverse creative expression of our communities.