VR Playground
VR Playground
Don a virtual reality headset, jump on a playground swing, and be transported on an exhilarating swing-powered adventure.
VR Playground is an experiential ride installation and aerial performance. Riders propel themselves through a series of colourful geometric virtual worlds, each driven by the action of swinging within a cubic structure. An array of fantastical virtual motions offers alternative realities to the real physical sensations of swinging, set within a unique architectural-scale virtual playground and soundscape, designed to excite a spirit of fun and visceral experimentation.
Riders inadvertently perform moments of wonder, awe and trepidation to spectators, many of whom are queuing for the ride themselves, curious to discover the secrets of these hidden worlds.
Premiere at Norfolk & Norwich Festival.
Choose one of four exhilarating modes of virtual transportation.
High Roller (rating “turbocharged”): scoot through the metropolis inside a mono-wheel. Shuttlecock (rating “bonkers”): leap tall structures in a single bound. Jellyfish (rating “eerie”): undulate upwards to escape the deep abyss. Walker (rating “feel-good”): from baby steps to giant strides, go strut your stuff.
Oscillate
Oscillate
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.
