Participants will wear a set of equipment including a smartphone, a pair of headphones, and earphones (for the customer service whom we identify as Emily) from the start of the action. They start at 12 different locations and head to Huashan separately with guidance of the GPS from the phone. The map also leads them to points of interest nearby where they can hear the performance of actors in a distinct atmos, which creates a vivid imagination of a parallel universe. “There is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and forgetting.” (Milan Kundera) We aim to let participants find the physical feeling from walking distance, experience the unusual within familiar encounters, and give them the feeling of virtual status through the process of logging out from urban life.
Seeking the main part of the target through real-time options and instructions on the cellphone, participants will reach the next part by executing actions on the sites. Making the real space as game background, participants are separated from the screen. The border between virtual world and reality is confused which forms a special sense different from daily experience. Hunting for a virtual identity himself is just like searching questions with no answers. In the process of pursuing, the imagination of the virtual world is accumulated. It will generate a shock and idea in the moment when the virtual world and reality crashes.
The second floor platform represents a lookout for the city after “logging out”, as the visuals of the work creates a blur between the layered spaces. We discuss the divide of perception between reality and virtuality with the speed, living pace, and patterns of the city by the VR box and the created visuals and animations on actual scenery inside. The vision in the device also transforms with the interaction between participants and make an experience of blurring out the virtual world and merging it into reality.
At the beginning of the second half, participants and Emily reconnect and continue using VR box from the ending of first half, but this partl emphasizes more on participants’ visual experience. Contents of 360 degrees video will bring participants to the city and the vision will extend beyond the body. With the features of 360 degrees video, we want to discuss the ways and boundaries of “seeing”. Instead of perceiving a “plane-like” image, participants fabricates a “space” by the experience of VR.
This part acts as an ending for the action. As participants get on our modified wheelchairs, they will experience a separated state between one’s body and mind, building an alternative system which continuously resist against the former daily life. After experiencing the visual and body impacts, participants are taken away from the original location, gradually blurring the identity as a “participant” with daily environment, while interfering the perception between body and space.