Parfois poétique, de temps en temps lyrique… curieusement politique
Somewhere poetic, sometimes lyric, somehow politic
诗于彼方, 韵自几时, 志为偶作

The initiating idea is to transform the ideas and aesthetics from ancient Chinese poetry into a VR experience that can result in a different outcome of the visual environment by the player/visitor’s actions. Their body movement will guide by the gameplay (interaction system), thus making theatric performance for viewers waiting or passing by the installation. The idea is to use techniques and understandings of different mediums to overcome the language and cultural barriers in a Virtual Reality environment and reinforce the original literature experience to create new forms of interactions, plays or performances.

How do successfully translate and bring the sentiments of a poem to life when they are part of the written language? Sometimes, it may be through its connection with nature, sometimes by the symbols… The lyricism is an excellent example of this capacity of a poem which expresses the emotions of its author by using a multitude of an audio image, gustatory, visual and olfactory. The immersive VR device is an ideal tool to immerse the users in these poems that are different because of their written culture but also have shared in the feelings they represent. In this project, we work with poems from different languages and writing systems. We see virtual reality as a means of immersing oneself in a poem and, above all, in the poet’s gesture. By creating a hybridization of 3 different poems, the differences between those cultures will be manifested by the gestures of the immersed “readers”. However, we will also see the moment of symbiosis when the gestures are equal, similar… Thus, the language is translated into a gesture that is theatricalized.

Contrary to the landscape tradition, the observer is distinguished from nature by his point of view. This project tends to move towards an aestheticization of space where the “observer” is in symbiosis with nature.

The project is a symbiosis between literature experience and VR technology. The three project members each bring a different view from their domains (video game/ game design, visual narrative, theatric and gestures) to create something new to give more dimensions that players/visitors have in the VR experience. The video game system provokes or guides the player to explore the VR space with actions and gestures. The gestures generate meanings for their understanding of the experience and improve their embodiment inside the VR space. The other interest of the project is the exploration of the interaction between the player/visitor with the VR environment, how they can construct cooperation between them, and how this symbiosis generates meanings for both the players/visitors inside the installation and other spectators around.

These perspectives give us the system’s structure that invites the players’ participation. It initiates their actions while simultaneously creating meaning from them by setting constraints in the virtual space and leaving the freedom for the players/visitors to construct how to play to create their understanding of the literature experiences from other cultural backgrounds. In other parts, the installation function as an intermedia that connect and embody the visual and audio elements and event concept from other mediums into the virtual space to create a meaning for a system that puts the player/visitor as a part of the creation. They create the field for the symbiosis of all the different perspectives and mediums in question around this project.