What's your perception of an object?

How and when would you feel familiar with an object?

How would you distinguish an object from its surrounding?

In this experience, I altered one physical feature, how the light passes through these objects, to introduce a new dissociative world.

I created a series of tasks, inspired by kids' cognitive development, for grown-ups to actively experience the process of learning the new physical world.

Tasks:

You will get a medal if you clear all 5 levels.

Level one: say it

Level two: fit in

Level three: magic

Level four: fantasy

End story: acquaintance

Detailed instructions will be given along the experience.

Further reading:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nfvyycLAgswvrRXeQgnZhGtYBvw5p6Q5OzerdjiQv98/edit?usp=sharing

Check out these great discussions:

The Only Hearable is series of portable soundscapes created for participants to interact with. Participants could still see, smell, touch, interact with... the real world, but only HEAR a different virtual reality by holding a customized lamp-shaped device I created. All the sounds are triggered by participants’ proximity to the virtual objects in the virtual scenery, which are fixed at their exact spatial coordination since the start of each experience. The soundscape itself, though, is not linked to any physical objects, meaning I could set up the scene anywhere. And what physical objects people interpret as generating the sound are totally an illusion from perception.

There are three levels in Only Hearable.

The first level is a starter level that prompts participants to realize that they could move 3-dimentionally in the space.

The second level is a fantasy world level that people, input from hearing, navigate through a landscape from the underwater, a storm store with sirens singing, a cozy cave that has water dripping down, to the deep down of the cave where a group of dragons live in.

The third level is a spatial musical instrument. Participants could move around freely to trigger different sounds along with the background beat.

After experiencing all the levels and going through the follow-up interview, participants will be prompted to experience the second level again, but at a different physical location. The goal is to find out if they could still recognize the same soundscape now with a different physical location. (Half could half couldn’t.)

The experience is powered by AR technology, using Adobe Aero on a smart phone. The device I created is only to reduce the sense of existence of the technology.

In Nested Volume, participants are exposed to 6 different worlds nested in those green objects and environmental elements that are physically in the real world. People could move the physical green objects to change how they would prefer to reveal the nested volumes (inner worlds). Participants will be looking through a customized headset I created from a first-person view with 3d vision. The depth of the vision varies between different levels. Participants also have the choice to hand-hold the device, with more realization of their physical surroundings.

Tasks:

The 6 nested volumes are as follows:

1. Static plain & mixed colors without depth.

2. A static spooky sketch-style room with depth.

3. A static colorful & geometrical graphic.

4. An animated realistic rainy forest with depth.

5. A dark-themed animated rainy environment with depth.

6. Static scattered texts with depths.

Among all, only level three has the real world not having any depth (using only one camera input).

The objects include all the objects from The Invisible, plus found objects (model shop tools and wearables) that come partially with this green. A digital filter was added in the OBS Studio to alter the visual inputs for the green areas.

The experience brought up topics from participants including familiarity with the surroundings, object intimacy, content ownership, exposure to manipulation, and how those factors might contribute to the immersiveness of the experience during the follow-up interview sessions.

The headset for Nested Volume has two live camera inputs to support the 3d vision need. For the whole four experiences plus one prototype experience, the devices morphed and evolved along the way