Millbank Prison VR
Millbank Prison VR: an immersive, virtual reality art experience inside the Millbank Penitentiary, Millbank Prison, Britain’s national Penitentiary from 1816 to 1890. Project ongoing 2020
Millbank Prison VR is an experimental art experience based on the Millbank Prison, Britain’s national Penitentiary from 1816 to 1890, which once occupied the current location of Tate Britain, Chelsea College of Arts and the Millbank housing estate, London, UK. The artsXR team recreated a section of the prison 'Pentagon No.6'.
The project aims to explore the concept of imagined histories and how we experience, time, absence and empathy using virtual reality as a modern panopticon, a system of control designed by the English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century.
Extended Realities: Late at Tate Britain July 2019
On 5th July 2019 at Tate Britain we shared an early prototype of Millbank Prison, Pentagon No.6. And with the public explored the concept of imagined histories and how we experience, time, absence & empathy through immersive art, emergent technologies and virtual reality.
Exploring contextual parameters in the form of an immersive experience in Virtual Reality, we created an immersive walk through the Millbank Penitentiary (Millbank Prison) re-imagining the notorious Victorian London prison which once occupied the exact location we were located at Tate Britain. Asking visitors, what connects the physical presence of the user to the empathic experience? How does time and the absence of reality relate to the user?
History: Millbank Prison 1816 - 1890.Millbank Prison, Westminster, London, was originally constructed as the National Penitentiary, and which for part of its history served as a holding facility for convicted prisoners before they were transported to Australia. It was opened in 1816 and closed in 1890. In 1843 Millbank's National Penitentiary status was downgraded, and it became a holding depot for convicts prior to transportation.
'lying there, sprawling over the neighbourhood with brown, bare, windowless walls, truncated pinnacles and a character unspeakably sad and stern'
Westminster Clock is not far distant from the penitentiary, so that its every stroke is as distinctly heard in each cell as if it were situated in one of the prison yards. At each quarter of an hour, day and night it chimes a bar of the "Old Hundredth" and those solemn tones strike on the ears of the lonely listeners like the voice of some monster spirit singing the funeral dirge of Time.
