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.

The VR was designed to be a one day sequence: we always experience space through time, so it was thought to be good to have three different spaces experienced in different times of the day, concluding the experience with the end of the day cycle.

The dimensions were based on the actors’ interaction movement: Which means it is the approximate diameter of the actors moving while reading the screenplay.

The materials were kept simple, minimalistic so they don’t take the attention from the story, and were expressed in different scenes by their different states to somehow express this ever-changing state of materials in nature, main materials used were:

Light/Daylight, water, and stone.

About the characters, there was always a character in the scene to give a visual the reference to scale, and the character gets closer to the VR viewer through the story, in order to gradually give the VR viewer more comfort in interacting with the story character.

The first scene

It was about a person just born into this new reality, that’s why it was decided for the space to seem open, spacious, with an unlimited view, and very bright, it was at the beginning of the day, the viewer walks around and explores his/her own balance on his own spot, how far he/she can wonder, the boundaries that could be reached, the materiality, the edginess the weirdness/beauty of this new world.

The person wearing the VR can see a more clear space around, get immersed in a more calm reality around that changes slowly, giving more time to get confident in walking around.

Materials:
Sun: sunrise-middle of the day
Stone: pillars as a ground with an edgy triangular shape, little dangerous feeling of the unknown, every pillar is a spot for different person/ story character, some pillar

tops are visible to others...
Water: thick fog that moves around in the base of the pillars.

The second scene

Here the person wearing the VR goggles starts to interact spontaneously with different characters around him through time.
In the story different transparent colorful characters moving around, mixing their colors when crossing each other in an agile movement between light and shade speaking with the viewer triggering colorful visual interaction.
Space was designed to feel like a more movable transitional space, a space that encouraging to move around.

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