Exploring New Mediums: The Artists Redefining Immersive and Spatial 3D
In the age of boundless pixels and powerful GPUs, the boundaries of art are shifting. Not just on screens, but into entire rooms, buildings, and cityscapes. At RenderCon 2025, a panel of 3D creators sat down with moderator Matt Milstead of Mograph.com to discuss the state of immersive and spatial 3D.
The conversation on the Exploring New Mediums: Immersive & Spatial 3D panel was less about software tools and more about the evolving language of art when it escapes the confines of a monitor. What happens when your “canvas” is a 50-foot LED wall? When your 3D model becomes a physical space people walk through? When VR and AR are just starting points for worlds that can exist anywhere?
Blurring the Line Between Art and Environment
Blake Kathryn, whose luminous, surrealist style has made her a standout in both digital fine art and commercial work, spoke about the difficulty of working at massive scale.
“Immediate thought … is perspective. A lot of times it’s scale and perspective. And it takes me the clay block out phase … like for the Artechouse one … the perspective took me like two and a half weeks to nail down.”
She explained how the geometry of a space can matter more than the pixels themselves and how immersive installations force artists to think about perception and viewpoint before beauty and detail.
That focus on perception continues in her more recent work The River Remembers, an installation at Artechouse NYC that explores memory and place through flowing, dreamlike architecture. In projects like this, Kathryn continues to expand what immersive 3D can mean, bending physical and digital space into meditations on scale, fluidity, and emotional resonance.
From YouTube to Immersive Storytelling
Wren Weichman, known for his work with Corridor Digital, brought the perspective of a storyteller constantly testing new technologies.
“I’ve been obsessed with trying to leverage new technology or just trying to visualize different things in entertaining ways. … It’s not about the technology, it’s about telling a good story within that.”
Weichman described the challenge of balancing cutting-edge tools with clear narratives, noting that the audience ultimately connects with the story more than the software.
World-Building at the Edge of Reality
Italian artist Annibale Siconolfi, better known as Inward, has built a career on intricate dystopian cityscapes. His creative roots are deeply architectural.
“I moved to Rome to study architecture … surrounded by centuries of history … this sharpened my sense of space and atmosphere.”
Though he no longer practices architecture directly, his training influences the way he imagines speculative structures and environments. His works — once confined to still images — are now appearing in installations as large as Las Vegas’s Sphere.
Looking ahead, Siconolfi’s fascination extends into emerging display technologies:
“Personally, an idea that I find really interesting is holographic technology … What if an entire city … you see holographic signs … it’s very cyberpunk.”
Designing at Concert Scale
Alex Ness, creative director and founder of NessGraphics, spoke from the world of live shows and music festivals.
“I do a lot of concert visuals … [at Coachella the stage was] 250 feet wide … something like 9000 pixels wide.”
Unlike gallery pieces, these visuals are made to amplify collective experience:
“For concert visuals … you’re making animations for a bunch of people who are inebriated … you’re just trying to heighten their experience of having a good time.”
That scale and immediacy shape how he approaches visual design — less about precision and more about impact.
Bridging Digital and Physical Spaces
While much of the discussion centered on the digital, all four panelists pointed to the importance of hybrid formats. That is, physical environments transformed through digital overlays. Kathryn put it most succinctly:
“I feel more and more of the digital, the physical and digital meshing … to be able to have that line consistently blurred where there is … this phygital synergy that’s happening.”
The Future: From Spectacle to Storytelling
As the panel wrapped, each artist reflected on where immersive 3D might go next.
Ness pointed to the arms race in rendering:
“Even faster renders … as we get faster renders, we just shove more at it.”
Weichman emphasized the speed of technological change:
“Two years ago, the thought of AI-generated video was laughable. And now it’s common … It’s more about just whether or not you have a good idea, a good concept, and whether or not you have the gall to make it.”
Siconolfi imagined cities filled with holographic displays. Kathryn saw a future where digital and physical spaces blend so seamlessly that the distinction disappears.
An Expanding Canvas
If there was a single takeaway from the session, it was that immersive and spatial 3D is not a subcategory of digital art — it’s a redefinition of what art can be. It demands a new creative mindset, one that treats space, interactivity, and sensory design as fundamental as color and composition.
As Milstead put it, the real challenge is imagining your work not on a screen, but as a lived environment. That idea seemed to linger in the air — fitting for a discussion about mediums that are, quite literally, all around us.
