David Kienpointner, Nathaniel Nutt, Moritz Riedl & Konrad Sonne

Submerge - A Para-fictional VR Experience, 2020

VR experience for HTC Vive

Submerge is a para-fictional VR experience, investigating the consequences of environmental pollution and overpopulation in an alpine region. A scenic construction of a speculative future in which yet unknown human activities, resulting from economic and ecologic instabilities, led to flooding and excessive warming of central Europe. These enormous shifts of local environmental conditions made most regional species extinct and transformed the former forests, cities and farmlands into an underwater world full of corrals and a growing number of previously exotic sea-creatures. The human habitats were raised to higher terrains, building hardly accessible settlements on the mountains, defined by a lack of infrastructure and the loss of its economic basis. On the ground of the sea, where they lived before, the only indications of humanity are ruins, the trash they throw away from their new settlements into the water and a few technological left-backs from a time when the human species could believe in a solution. In an environment, not accessible for humans, the main protagonist is a non-human creature, one of those now dominating this world. A fish, coming from the Indo-Pacific Ocean to Sector 6020, previously known as Innsbruck. By exploring the former old town of Innsbruck through the vision of a fish, more and more hints of how this area changed so drastically come up. It is an open world experience guiding freely through odd objects and fragments of history, reaching your own conclusion. By entering the world of Submerge, the visitor gets into a stranger’s body, changing his vision into a reduced but colorful abstraction. In this strange yet unknown body the visitor explores an environment full of spatial anomalies and fragmented information. More and more the mystery of his avatars self as well as the history of the world he jumped into become clear.

 

Duration: 5 min.

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ABOUT THE ARTIST

This work "Submerge" was developed as part of the 52 HZ – Weird Intermediate Beings, Virtual Reality Seminar at ./studio3 Institute for experimental architecture in University of Innsbruck in 2020 under the supervision of Uwe Brunner & Cenk Güzelis. The collective has researched on new way of seeing in LIDAR Scan Environments through various Animal Visions (Snail,Chameleon,Mandarinfish,Dragonfly,Clownfish,

Python) to create virtual reality experiences that can change the way we perceive our built environments. All pieces of the exhibition: Anna Klam, Hannah Kotai, Lukas Vorreiter, Andreas Thaler, Reefkid, 2020. Jaclyn Debiasi, Iris Schumacher, Rebecca Sillaber, The Forbidden Fruit, 2020. Johanna Acham, Stephan Höllwarth, Jan Con, Sandro Sanin, Unexpected Observer, 2020. Sabrina Neuwirth, Fabio Brun, Laura Kopp, Magdalena Recheis, Paradox, 2020. Jan Classen, Jonas Längenfelder, Anna Pompermaier, Jim Wagner, Counterfactual Mythologies, 2020

If you are interested in exhibiting or viewing this artistic VR experience, please send an email to us.

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