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Kusama's Reality

Abby Ausmus, Lilian Yang

Yayoi Kusama’s theories and art brought to fruition in an infinite virtual universe.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/17R9XQ_xXUDRjy46K59dPMIv–8BC7z0TOHmp8fUPW5c/edit?usp=sharing

Description

One visitor enters at a time, into a room covered in mirrors: floors, ceilings and walls. As the door closes behind them, along with the world, the now dark room is lit only by small circular LED lights descending from the ceiling. The person becomes an integral part of the piece, invited to ponder their place in the universe as they stare at the infinite number of reflections of themselves. Among the seemingly countless particles, they feel almost lost in the room, until their humanness is what the artist likes to call “obliterated.” The observer feels themselves become one with the lights scattered across the room, as the person too is scattered all over the room. And yet, an enchanted and uplifting existentialism consumes them.

Contemporary Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama explores the concept of infinity and existentialism in her works. She calls her ideas about existentialism “obliteration,” the idea that everything can be broken down into infinite particles. Her installations often simulate an infinite space, littered with repetitive polka dots and lights, creating a sense of awe and tranquility.

We based our work off some of her installations, and her theoretical claims such as we are one particle amongst infinitely many others, just as our planet is one particle amongst infinitely many others. In addition, we incorporated her theory that dots obliterate us and our environment into infinity, uniting us with our surroundings.

This virtual reality experience is meant to mirror Kusama’s reality as a single particle amongst many, allowing the user to feel engulfed by a world of dots and patterns. Exploring various environments with interactive objects, the user experiences hallucinations similar to those described by Kusama, navigating through a journey about life before death in a virtual space.

Classes

Immersive Experiences (UG)

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Control

Andri Kumar

Control is a VR experience that explores human kind’s false self of control of oneself and the strange form memory takes on when posed as a flashback in our minds.

https://www.andrikumar.com/control

Description

Control is a VR experience that takes users on a poetic journey. In this journey, users will get to explore what it means to have control of one's life and actions.

As you will see in the video link, users begin the journey by walking around a public space. However, once they turn a corner, they encounter a horrific humanoid figure. Immediately, they find themselves back where they started their journey. Yet, this time, as they walk around something different is happening: time only moves when they move. Nevertheless, whenever they turn the corner they once again encounter the horrific figure and begin the looping journey all over again.

I created this experience because I was inspired by my own experience with memory, control, and flashbacks. The horrific humanoid figure represents trauma. The looping experience in which the user controls time represents the experience of flashback.

Control is another one of my projects that explores the use of abstract for empathetic story-telling. According to Gestalt’s principle of closure, the brains make sense of the world by “closing up” visual gaps.

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I designed this piece to be abstract so that users would only be given pieces of the story, resulting in them needing to put in “brain work” to understand the narrative. For example, the environment is a public space but it is unclear exactly what kind of public space– instead the user's mind makes that decision. Since the story really is only created once the users build it by filling it with their own memories, my theory is that this results in more empathetic storytelling.

When presenting this piece at the show, I will add elements around the headset. There large screen showing what users are seeing and physical objects surrounding the installation to bridge experience from VR to actual reality. These physical objects will be items from the experience, such as mannequins and miniature buildings, but will not take up much space.

Classes

Immersive Experiences (UG)

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OneManBand

Dingwen Kou, Sarah Peng

Onemanband explores our modern relationship with music, sound, and the tools we use to make music, funneling the concept of music through a VR DAW (digital audio workstation) environment to create the Tiltbrush/Ableton hybrid that avant-garde SoundCloud artists dream of.

http://www.sarahspeng.com/onemanband

Description

The phrase “classical music” probably makes you think of the instruments associated with it: a piano, a flute, or whatever instrument you learned to play as a kid. What about avant-pop, glitch hop, grime – what does that look like? As the form of music itself has become more abstract, rules being broken with every new subgenre formed, so too has the concept of fixed “instruments” broken down. Onemanband is about the abstraction and deconstruction of contemporary music trends. It is based on our interest in making a music creation program that strips away the clunky, uninviting DAW interface. Onemanband was made in Unity with the SteamVR SDK, and it communicates with Ableton Live through OSC messages that are run through LiveGrabber, a series of Max For Live plugins. The samples used in the original project are from a number of royalty-free sample packs from LANDR, and the music video in the recording studio scene is SOPHIE's “Faceshopping”.

Classes

Immersive Experiences (UG)