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The State of Darkness: VR Art Installation

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In brief

"The State of Darkness" is a VR experience where human and non-human narratives coexist. The participant meets a human-like artificial character Adam B
who is influenced by the behavior of the participant as tracked in real-time by a set of biosensors.

Description

In this Enactive VR installation the participant finds himself in the prison cell of some unrecognized country, locked up with a distressed person. His feelings provoked during this encounter are tracked by biosensors, connecting his fate to that of his fellow prisoner.

"The State of Darkness" is a part of research project Enactive VR led by research professor Pia Tikka. The project was supported by Finnish Cultural Foundation, Virtual Cinema Lab of Aalto University and EU Mobilitas Pluss Grant of Tallinn University.

Read more about the research idea and creative process here.

Recent presentations:
Prague Quadrennial’s 36Q˚ - Blue Hour, Prague 2019;
ICIDS 2018 Art Expo - Non-Human Narratives, Dublin 2018.

Sound design

In this project the soundscape was crucial for creating the atmosphere and for guiding the viewer, since the visual elements were left almost completely in darkness. The spatial characteristics of the prison and a psychological heaviness were represented mainly through the sounds. The challenge was to form them in a way to be easily recognizable, and, at the same time, leave space for imagination.

The soundscape was created in a linear way, with some randomness in sound events related to the physical space.

The implementation of audio in Unreal project was done through Fmod middleware software.

Team

Idea, Concept, Director:
Pia Tikka
Script and Dramaturgical supervision:
Eeva R. Tikka
Enactive Character and Production Pipeline design:
Victor Pardinho
Enactive Scenography:
Tanja Bastamow
Sound design I:
Can Uzer
Sound design II:
Iga Adela Gerolin
Technical 3D Artist:
Maija Paavola
Symbiotic Creativity:
Ilkka Kosunen
Machine learning consultation:
Paul Wagner
Unreal engine consultation:
Ats Kurvet

 

Publication

Tikka, Pia; Bastamow, Tanja; Gerolin, Iga; Gerry, Lynda Joy; Pardinho, Victor; Kaipainen, Mauri; Kosunen, Ilkka. (2019). The State of Darkness: Non-human narratives embedded in the encounters with artificial agents. In: Lissa Holloway-Attaway and Néill O'Dwyer (Ed.). Non-Human Narratives. Carnegie Mellon Press [forthcoming].

Pictures