GRAVITATIONAL BODIES 2024

Gravitational Bodies delivers a deeply absorbing VR experience by combining the physical sensation of floating mid-air on an emergency stretcher with visuals of a perpetually evolving generated landscape. In this experience, you escape gravity, leave your body behind, and lose yourself in digital infinity, only to discover that your physical body’s proprioception constraints hinder a total escape into virtuality. However, it’s not just the information derived from our muscles and nerves that we are tempted to ignore; with rapidly advancing AI technologies, we no longer have to rely on our cognitive capacities either Gravitational Bodies seductively utilizes these specific technologies that have led to our current state of emergency, playfully and critically examining their impact on our present condition.

The interface of this interactive work is a customized emergency stretcher, typically used to evacuate individuals from challenging locations like ships, ski slopes, and caves. This installation cradles your vulnerable VR body, wearing VR glasses and suspended above the floor of the exhibition space. The stretcher’s X, Y, and Z positions and orientations are dynamically adjusted using a flying rig. The trajectory of the stretcher initially correlates with the movement of the virtual camera, transitioning from a standing to a reclining position, shifting your balance and sensation of gravity. Over time, the stretcher’s motions intensify, becoming increasingly challenging to endure.

Two versions of the flying rig exist: one is fully automated using servo-controlled linear actuators, while the other is manually controlled by three people, giving the installation a more performative character. The imagery transitions from augmented to virtual reality, from a ground-level perspective to a generated bird’s-eye view. Hovering over a landscape surrounded by undulating mountains, you drift through turns and fly over a meditative but slightly uncanny, synthetically generated infinite landscape. The progression of the experience is directly linked to various render styles, digital glitches, fluid perspective shifts, and dynamic warping with effects loosely inspired by gravitational sci-fi concepts such as the O’Neill cylinder and the von Braun wheel.

Whether you’re feeling bored in VR isolation or can no longer tolerate the physical misalignment and start to feel nauseous, upon re-entering the augmented state, you find yourself securely strapped onto the stretcher, rescued, and reconnected with the physical world of the surrounding exhibition space.