An imagined user journey 

The booth at the festival is approximately 3x3 meters. Its walls are covered with a dark red velvet. The floor has a similarly-coloured, deep-piled rug. White, glowing spheres hang down from a dark ceiling. An assistant brings me a VR headset. I am offered a chair and told that the experience can be played seated or standing, with no need for walking. I hear a windy, rushing sound design with organic elements and heartbeats. It sounds intriguing and a bit mysterious. Together with the red walls, I feel as if I will be challenged. But the setting gives very little away about the experience. 

When I put on the headset, I see the animation of something that reminds me of the velvet walls. It’s a soft, diffused surface. The title “The tunnel” hovers in the air in front of me. A short text explains that I can move forward using slow swimming movements with my hands and that I can grip things. I see that I have the outline of hands, but no other bodily representation.

The text dissolves. I seem to stand in a small, red cave. I try to move forwards, but end up inside the red wall. The cloudy red surrounds me and the noise gets muffled. But nothing else happens, and I understand that there is nothing of interest beyond the walls. I reverse back to where I started and look around. Moving is like gliding through liquid. Behind me, there seems to be a corridor leading to the left. I move around the corner and see that the space widens out to what appears to be a cave-like tunnel, stretching out in front of me. The sound design also sounds larger. The place feels safe, but also secretive.

The tunnel seems quite wide – maybe five to six metres. The roof is filled with a foggy, brownish darkness. Columns that might be of dark stone or wood are placed irregularly through the space, almost like a dead, underworldly forest. I cannot see any canopies – the trunk-like columns stretch into the darkness above. The floor seems like a continuation of the walls, just slightly darker. I seem to float two meters above it.

The only other objects to be seen are glowing spheres that float among the columns. Three of them are visible from where I float, but shimmering light in the distance indicates that there might be more of them further off. The pearlescent light from the spheres seems to come from the inside, as if they are magical spheres with inner lives. They are the size of grapefruits, or maybe handballs.

I wish to explore them. I try waving at one. It shivers. I grab one up with both hands, and can then pull it towards me. If I let loose, it floats up to its previous location. I can hear a sound emanating from it, which makes me think that it contains something. When I lift it up towards my face, the sound gets louder.

I am distracted by a different noise – the bumbly, buzzing sound of an insect. I look around, and see a large, surprisingly colourful moth approaching. It’s dark brown, almost like the ceiling above, but with patterned wings in dark colours. It hovers in the air and looks at me with big, almost human eyes before speaking.

“Well, hello there. Welcome, welcome. So happy to get some company. Already busy checking out the spheres, are you?” It then continues,

“Remember, if you break one you buy one, eh?” It laughs at its own sense of humour.

I look at it, as it flies around me.

“The sphere, have you tried eating it yet?” it asks.

I look back at the sphere, and pull it closer to my face. It suddenly grows and engulfs me. I am standing in an egg-like sphere that might be a couple of meters in diameter and three meters high. I now have a grey, androgynously outlined representation of a body and am standing on a solid floor. There is the sound of old-fashioned fluorescent lighting. The place seems cold and sterile, with an almost blinding whiteness. Some white shelves and cupboards cover the bottom half of the egg. In the midst of the egg, a stand with what looks like an iPad is raised from the floor. I step up to it and see a questionnaire appearing on the screen.

It is a multiple-choice form, asking me to check my religion, and then my fitness level. I try to check the alternative “Pass” as I find the setting uncomfortable. I don’t want to have to give this kind of objectifying information to an unknown entity. When I try to pass, a shrill sound is heard and a bright red text informs me that this option is not available at the moment.

I don’t like that I cannot interact as I would wish, but I answer something. When I’ve completed the questionnaire, the egg dissolves.

“Well, what did you think about that? I heard you had some trouble there. It’s just trying to get to know you. Try being more positive next time, eh?” Moth says.

I’m wondering what to think about Moth. It was initially helpful, but that comment wasn’t nice.

I move on, interacting with more spheres. Some are rather fun, while others make me uncomfortable. Moth accompanies me, sometimes telling funny jokes and sometimes being a bit of a jerk. Moth seems very interested in my experiences in the spheres. I wonder why and what Moth really wants.

I eventually get the impression that the tunnel is angling upwards, and I move towards what appears to be an opening into fresh air. I escape the tunnel and end up on what appears to be a rock shelf on the side of a mountain.

There is blue sky above, and a mountainous landscape lies below. There is nowhere to go from here, but there is a liberating feeling of space, air and freedom. On the middle of the stone platform is a column with the kind of tilted sign that can be seen at vista points. It resembles the iPad-shaped signs from the lab-spheres, but is more rugged. It seems old and permanent.

The whole place feels like an epilogue of sorts. When I approach, the sign lights up and displays a text explaining the concept for the tunnel and how it is demonstrating aspects of human decision making that are relevant to the situation for CBOW.

It asks me what I thought about Moth and explains that its shifty nature was meant to make me reflect on the relationship, demonstrating how humans tend to attempt to categorize people according to trust.

The experience ends.

Strengths and weaknesses

With “The Tunnel”, the idea of presenting the topic by telling information about CBOW has been abandoned, and the whole experience is designed to present the participant with a row of challenges. It is designed to stimulate reflection by the participant, and this personal journey of reflection can be considered to be the actual linear story of the experience. As with an obstacle course, it’s not the solution to individual challenges but the whole experience of the person completing the course which is the final outcome.

I believe that this structure will be more motivating for the participant than exploring presented information. Meaningful challenges will probably make the participant actively continue to interact with the spheres. The lack of details in the tunnel means that there is little to disturb the participant’s focus. The interventions by the moth will also encourage and comment on the spheres, motivating progress. It is intended to give an added layer to the experience throughout by introducing the ongoing challenge of the developing relationship.  

However, the concept still doesn’t avoid introducing information that might trigger biases. In order to create an experience that would work for all kinds of participants, with widely different backgrounds and beliefs, I need to have an element of control over the challenges in the spheres. Choices that might be challenging to some can be easy for others. However, I need the interactions to be both meaningful and challenging to all participants, since I aim to communicate important aspects of objectification and prejudice, and do this through the choices that the participant makes.

As a consequence, I will need to tailor the interactions according to various participant profiles. For example, people on opposite sides of the political spectrum will probably react differently to real-life instances of othering, as polarized reactions to Donald Trump’s presidency have recently demonstrated in the US.

In order to tailor the interactions, I will need to collect information about the participant’s perceived background or cultural belonging. This can be done by asking the participants to answer objectifying questionnaires, which would also demonstrate what it feels like to have to reduce oneself to fit into categories.

However, such an attempt at categorizing participants would in reality mean that the experience is itself both objectifying and categorizing, which is exactly the opposite of what the concept wishes to achieve. Challenging participants to objectify themselves is also ethically questionable. It might demonstrate the emotional side of objectification, but it could also be considered an example of “ludonarrative dissonance”(Hocking 2007) a name given to the situation of an offered interaction being in conflict with the core messaging of the experience.

Lastly, although I do believe that it can be fruitful to explore emotions like discomfort in a non-fiction experience, presenting unpleasant choices would also be detrimental to creating motivation. While some participants might enjoy exploring a string of uncomfortable but interesting challenges, but I do think such participants would be in the minority.

As I wish to create an experience that is at its core positive and friendly, I conclude that the tunnel concept can not deliver on these goals.