A VR experience C by MHD Fares Qadri

In 1942, Albert Einstein was teaching at Oxford University, and one day, he just gave an exam of physics to his senior class. And he was walking on the campus with his assistant when all of the sudden, the assistant looked at him and said "Dr. Einstein, this exam which you just gave, isn't that exactly the same exam you gave to the same class one year ago?","Yeah, yeah" said Einstein "it's exactly the same"."But Dr. Einstein, how could you possibly do that?", the assistant said. "Well," said Einstein, "the answers have changed." In other words, The question remains the same about struggling for human equality and human rights breaking stereotypes, but the time changes. If we still are giving the same solutions then we are not creative enough to bring new contexts and boundaries for society to develop... same answers will not bring us even to the same place it was leading us before. We live our today inside a media and socio-economical bubble that is determining how "normal" people should act, and what stereotypes they should follow, To form the "inside the box" thinking where we agree with everyone around to save reputation, avoid embarrassment, and feel secure staying in the same social context we are today. but the problem is that (with time) these norms will not even result in the same socio-conditions we have now, things will get more deconstructed that's why the change should not be only revolutionary but should also be treated as a permanent necessity. That's why society should always work on making inclusive projects, to avoid risks of eliminating different people, minorities, and ones who don't have enough power to stand for themselves. When speaking about challenging the norms we need to define the problem (not only fixing the results) and think about how can we change the way people systematically acts towards the issue. Ex.solving climate change, we should care about sustainability, which only changes systematically by rethinking our norms of living. Why doing a film? -Encouragement for creative thinking, initiating moods for the more integrated environment, and looking upon things from a different perspective needs to be a powerful act of film and art. -People usually tend to stick to what they know and the brain usually tends to name things to understand and set boundaries for perception, and through the film, I want to challenge for new perspectives of thinking.

Another inspiration was Blade Runner 2049 that uses the elements of nature to define time, space and conditions, we don’t see clocks, actors don’t say the time, but it is about light and shadow, big doms and flooding outside, but inside you see people having 10 seconds to shower, it is not about the time then... it is about the state of the inbalance. The scenes are not defining materials and particles, but the way they are delivered to the audience builds up the state of the intended existence.

Water in Blade Runner 2049 is used to show floatings outside (sea wall), lacking inside, which almost kills the protagonist K, then we see it as the snow that gives the revealing sense in the last scene.

Water, light, and shadow are used to shape the story and guide the audience through the film and that’s what I’m trying to have in my VR experience. To make people interact with these elements in a way that they can have their own views and perspective as they are free in this world, you can go everywhere you want as it is an open world you have the choice whether to interact with the story and with the other character or not.
In the real world, you can see these elements you can go to the beach, you go on top of a skyscraper but it is hard to be standing in the middle of infinite water or witnessing a day lapse in matters of minutes, the world C has this twist of the imagination and uncertainty though you are in control of yourself.

L (the character) is not anyone, in particular, as it is just there wondering about the world it is in as any one of the audiences entering this world, and the genuine elements of this world are happening around you where in the EPILOGUE scene you (as an audience) is invited to join.

Despite the fact the whole world has a dreamy look, it is featureless ( why I mean by that is, there are no props or details) almost as in the Ganzfield effect, where space is given to the essential elements of water and light to become the protagonist and fill in the core of this poetic experience.

Voyage:

- Hello I am light,
- What color are you?
- It depends on how you see me, and what surrounds you.
- for now I am only light, and when we meet, only then we can know what color am I to you.

The script is happening in three different spaces: New World, Voyage and Epilogue as I named them, after some sketching and rough ideas about the qualities that each space have in my mind, I didn't want the spaces to be far from reality so I thought to work with an architect to have something in between fantasy and real-life so the audience doesn't feel this or that space is imaginary or too weird, I want the audience to be in a dreamy world but still be believable and it exists, so working with an architect was great to connect these qualities together.

While working on the spaces and because it is a VR experience which would allow the audience to walk, experience the space as they feel and want, as there will be a character that will talk and interact with the audience, we had two options either I animate the character or to do motion capture using a tracking suite which will track the person’s movement and translate it into the character in the VR experience and I chose to do so, and I did a short trial with two actresses giving them the script without any instructions or guidelines just to see how may they interpret, move and react to the script so I can think about the movement and apply that to the spaces we are designing.

After designing the spaces I wanted to have only natural light and by that I mean the sunlight which was the main source of lighting and have it as a loop, so the first scene opens with the sunrise and the last close just before it, so it is 24 hours compressed in 8 minutes.
Since the Project was first presented in Stockholm and as we were trying to achieve some kind of hyper-reality we wanted to mimic the movement of the Sun in the specific location so we applied the specific sun movement to the specific location, and the latitude would change according to of the location that I’m presenting in.

The SCENOGRAPHY and it’s relation to the story plot:

In the story movement I sought inspiration in Viktor Frankl’s work (Man’s Search for Meaning). In these three scenes, I was trying to build areas, in its confined/non confined state, that would help express different aspects and phases of personal integration into the spatiality and person-social positioning of oneself in the everchanging vital reality.

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