VR & AR projects
Rei carter and the forgotten universe
This project aims to show the importance of dreams for our wellbeing by exploring various interactive and immersive media challenging the boundaries of sequential storytelling. In the current context of social media and the Algorithm age, our individuality is increasingly at risk as we are dissociating from the unconscious. Dreams can help us learn more about ourselves, taking Carl G Jung's individuation process as an example.
The story of Rei Carter’s individuation process is told through her instagram profile and is accompanied by an interactive 360 panorama VR experience allowing the audience to plunge into Rei’s subconscious dream worlds and travel through the Forgotten Universe, a realm of collective dream worlds populated by surreal entities and archetypes inspired by Jung’s collective unconscious and indigenous dream theories on dream realms.
The story is set in a parallel universe called Earth-333, where a conforming society uses a dreaming device called i.R.E.M. to enter the lucid dreaming state as entertainment during sleep. This device allows people to create their fantasy worlds, but often artificial and superficial instead of exploring their true inner worlds. One day, Rei Carter's device breaks and opens the access to the Forgotten Universe. Along her journey she rediscovers her true self, but the journey is full of challenges and emotional turmoil as she, for the first time, confronts these unknown sides of her psyche which makes her question her whole "masked" identity.
The Forgotten Universe 360 experience (VR compatible)
Follow Rei's journey
Self-care factory
Self-Care Factory explores the theme of love by focusing on the concept of self-love and self-care, the practice of consciously doing things to improve our wellbeing. The character is receiving skin-care and objects connoting self-care activities such as reading, listening to music, exercising and relaxing with a cup of tea next to a scented candle. As the audience scans the image with Artivive, an animation is triggered showing the result of self-care as love circulating and flowers blooming from their head symbolising mental and physical growth.
By putting the theme of self-care in a somewhat contradictory setting of a factory with the character resembling more of a robot, this piece ironically comments on the fact that self-care is not something that can be automated, but is something that needs conscious effort and self-awareness and invites the audience to reflect of their own act of self-care.
AR Hackathon: Hack Your Reality
organised by Ricebox
How to use AR to make a better world?
This hackathon focused on developing an AR prototype in teams by focusing on storytelling and activism.
Our team decided to tackle cultural appropriation in pop culture taking singer Kacey Musgraves inappropriate appropriation of the Vietnamese Ao Dai as an example.
Our vision is for people to stop blindly use other cultures without knowing its context and history, but to represent them with appreciation and accuracy.
Our mission was to use AR to help people learn about the correct context of cultural pieces by developing a filter that points out the cultural appropriation and upon interaction reveals the appropriate context. In this example, as the user scans Kacey Musgraves' photo, the filter shows the correct way of wearing the "ao dai" alongside informative captions about its historical and cultural context.
My role was to 3D model the character and to put it together in SparkAR. The model spins around showing the ao dai and upon tapping the screen, the model changes into different types of ao dai, educating the audience on the historical context of ao dai.
