Google launches Tilt Brush 'artist in residency' VR art initiative

The landscape of cutting-edge art, usually limited to traditional multimedia, audio and visual hacks, is undergoing a major shift with the advent of virtual reality art tools like Oculus Medium and Quill.

Now, one of the earliest players in the space, Google's VR paint-meets-sculpting app Tilt Brush, has launched what it calls an "artist in residency" program to push VR art even further into the mainstream of creative expression.

We saw the first hints of such a program last year in France, where Google trained a small group of artists in the ways of VR art. The new program is much bigger and boasts over 60 artists, including New Yorker cartoonist Bob Mankoff, The Little Mermaid animator Glen Keane, Justin Roiland, the co-creator of Adult Swim's Rick and Morty, and Susan Kare, well known as the graphic designer behind the interface icons and fonts for Apple's Mac computers back in the '80s.

Unlike a traditional artist residency, the program won't actually be housing the artists as they create. Instead, they're being given inside access to Tilt Brush developers, becoming, in Google's words "part of the Tilt Brush team." When asked if the residency program included compensation of any kind to the artists, a Google spokesperson declined to reveal those details.

Given the relative lack of transparency, on its face, the "residency" seems more like a way for Google to use the talents of artists to engage in research to figure out how to make Tilt Brush better (and get some high profile artists fronting its app in the process).

But despite the somewhat murky aspect of the relationship (the program is only open to handpicked artists), the initiative represents a commitment by Google to further the reach of VR beyond the realm of gaming and into areas of creation, something that is often overlooked by those only superficially familiar with current VR systems.

Like Oculus' Medium, with Tilt Brush, artists can output what they create to the .obj format, allowing VR-created objects to be 3D printed. Additionally, back in December, Tilt Brush added another export feature that allows users to easily export Tilt Brush sessions to YouTube (another Google company). That's an important update in that, like gaming, watching VR art being created on platforms like Twitch is slowly gaining popularity. Connecting Tilt Brush natively to YouTube could spur even more VR art session sharing.

One of the most surprising things I've noticed when introducing VR art tools to traditional artists is how quickly they take to the new medium. Unlike other digital tools, the Oculus Touch controllers and, to a lesser degree, the HTC Vive controllers, offer a more intuitive and organic approach to creating art in a digital medium. It's likely that, for those reasons, I have yet to meet a pen, pencil, paint or sculpture artist who tries VR art and dismisses it as too artificial or not organic enough.

It appears, at least early on, that VR tools like Tilt Brush are the digital art medium many traditional artists have been waiting for.