Social VR.

2021.

Dream sharing is a venerated ritual practice in indigenous communities of North and South Americas. Dreams are not private occurances but communal knowledge that guide the tribe decisions. The indigenous tradition suggests a multimodal worldview toward blurring the distinction between the waking reality and the in-dream reality, which is regarded in Western modernity as the antithesis between the “real” and the virtual realities. Space in virtual reality engenders an embodied spatiality anchored on movement, temporality, and liminality. Worlding in virtual reality can be a trans-media method that expresses and articulates curious relationships between space and its mediation on social events. Through the creation of VRChat-based world Klein Room and the hosting of the Dream Sharing event, we discuss the special properties and potentials of architecture and space in virtual reality, and explore the extent to which social VR enacts social interaction and intimate group sharing. Klein Room is composed using the everyday architectural language of room, corridor, and door, but it is designed with sensitivity to their highly non-neutral embodied spatio-temporal significance. The paradoxicality of Klein Room pairs with subconscious aspects of dream, and a spirit of playfulness is instilled in the innovative exploration in this spatially staged social VR.

Initial part done in July 2021 as part of Digital Futures 2021 Workshop: “Let Me Hear Your Body Talk,” in collaboration with Yujie Wang