The whole world turned upside down this year, but before everything went haywire, I was fortunate enough to premiere an incredible social VR experience at the Sundance Film Festival. Metamorphic was years in the making via a wonderful collaboration with Wesley Allsbrook, Elie Zananiri, and John Fitzgerald. Hailed as the “Best Art” in the New Frontier program by The Verge, Adi Robertson wrote, “It’s just gorgeous. The world is an impressionist painting come to life. Your body is stripped down to something like a living circulatory system made of slender, animated brush strokes.” Metamorphic explores new territory not only through its interactive design and experiential arc, but also establishes a new paradigm for animating the creative output of artists in VR.
At its heart, Metamorphic is a social VR experience where participants shape their appearances and surroundings through movement and play in a series of majestically drawn worlds. This transformative encounter explores the ephemeral nature of the self by offering the radical possibility of effortless transformation. VR is a medium particularly suited to the exploration of embodiment and identity. The mechanics of Metamorphic are thus designed to create an environment where participants can interact with each other with no initial point of reference, then playfully amend their world. Sounds a bit abstract, I know!
It’s hard to succinctly sum up an experience that is so viscerally driven, and one that is ultimately shaped by the behavior of the participants. At the end of the day, it’s easier to show rather than explain Metamorphic, but currently requires four computers, two wireless VR headsets, and thirteen Vive trackers to get up and running. All the same, my personal hope was to create something that explored new territories in immersive storytelling and how it could expand our sense of self rather than curtail it. Collective virtual spaces are already becoming popular, and I hope this project can instill a sense of wonder and possibility for how people might explore future virtual worlds and come to understand their identities as fluid.
For its premiere at Sundance, two people were separately brought into the installation and put in wireless VR headsets with full-body tracking. Their journey was then driven by worlds and avatars drawn in Quill by Wesley Allsbrook and the music of Tim Fain, but also through a core interactive mechanic that allowed participants to change their appearances and environment through interactivity. Along the way participants also encountered each other, along with real and digital characters, that further played upon what was really virtual inside the installation. Essentially, there is a lot happening while in Metamorphic, and it’s definitely going to continue to turning into something bigger!
