What you see here are video exports that could be labeled as a meditative prompts, or geometrical visual illusions.
What these are, is in fact, an export of varied modeling and animation options for the work done by Ivan Djikanovic, a member of my team in the works for the XR (mixed reality) Immersive experience called Advaita: Apparently Real Virtual Sanctuary.
The basis for this work, which is my final presentation of the MA studies at Stockholm Academy of the Arts, aims to explore two elements :
-
how can we use XR (mixed reality) Immersive art as a means to investigate non-duality and topics surrounding it and;
-
how can we make a virtual presence possible for the recipients of this experience that furthers the meaning of the piece.
The basis for this experience, and its main inspiration we found in the Vedic story (Nyaya) called Rajjusarpa (translated as The rope and serpent).
The story goes as follows:
During night a man walks down a path. In the middle of of the road, he sees a snake. He gats very scared, and heads back. In the morning, he takes the same path only to realize that it is not a snake what he has seen but only a rope. All his fears vanish.
Taking this as a driving force for what we set to do, we produced a two people experience that, with the use of a rope as a prop, plays with two perspectives.
One subject puts on a VR headset, and another is the bound to the physical world.
Playing and imagining and reinterpreting the processes of ''awakening'', ''realization'' and ''enlightenment'', we produced an experience that substitutes what we know is real, does so trough an archetonic VR headset experience as well as intertwining elements and abstracts of varied scriptures in the piece. The sense of hijacked reality is also emphasized with the fact that the props and instructions are sent to participants homes. Thus the space and time of the experience is tailor made by the participants themselves, and exists in a meta-plane
Seemingly separated, our two participants are a part of one wholesome experience, aiding one another without knowing it.
Working on this work,we investigated Advaitic topics and approaches, only to realize that that bases of this work is to be found in the non-evident unity of the two elements, functioning as one.