Oscillate is an immersive interactive artwork based on two popular entertainment technologies: the multi millennia-old rope swing and the 21st century Oculus Rift – the former designed to excite the vestibular system, the latter designed to excite the visual cortex. Oscillate was co-commissioned by Sheffield Doc/Fest and Crossover Lab and shown as part of VR Arcade at Site Gallery, Sheffield.
“Contemporary art, gaming and immersive technologies collide in this test-bed project, exploring the limits of virtual reality. New work and interactive content will be experienced through VR headsets.”
Oscillate is designed to exploit a sense of anxiety that can be created and amplified by mentally flipping between parallel activities of private experience and public performance. Each activity is experienced as the rider’s consciousness, and immersion, switches between virtual and real worlds. This fluctuation has both terrifying and thrilling effect.
A rider sits alone in a silent virtual digital facsimile of the gallery’s bustling real physical space. Once the rider starts swinging their trajectories in real and virtual worlds are initially matched. However, the rider’s virtual swing amplitude slowly begins to amplify, and the floor starts to drop away, sinusoidally in harmony with the swing (a reference to Irmin Roberts’ pioneering dolly zoom effect used by Hitchcock in Vertigo). Both illusions are designed to make the rider believe that they are swinging higher than they actually are.
