SANGHEE, Worlding···, 2023-2024, Interactive VR, Single-Play based on a local network, 20min ©SANGHEE

Worlding··· is a participatory work of art that revisits VR’s bodily surface and the style of a stateless online game. It consists of VR work and a physical setup for the output of VR play. Wearing VR headsets applying hand-tracking technology, Players are encouraged to alter the terrain in virtual reality with their bare hands.

Topographical distortion accumulates after each participation. The database saves the individual player’s behavioral data and prints them into a topographic map piled on a floor and a moving image of terrain projected on a screen. During the exhibition, audiences participate in weaving a joint terrain.

SANGHEE, Worlding···, 2023-2024, Interactive VR, Single-Play based on a local network, 20min ©SANGHEE

Worlding··· is a participatory work of art that revisits VR’s bodily surface and the style of a stateless online game. It consists of VR work and a physical setup for the output of VR play. Wearing VR headsets applying hand-tracking technology, Players are encouraged to alter the terrain in virtual reality with their bare hands.

Topographical distortion accumulates after each participation. The database saves the individual player’s behavioral data and prints them into a topographic map piled on a floor and a moving image of terrain projected on a screen. During the exhibition, audiences participate in weaving a joint terrain.

In the VR work, the players take on the role of a watchman who should bury an enormous corpse floating in a swamp. The players perform this task using their own hands. In this process, they experience physical fatigue and witness the aging and exhaustion of the VR body. Their labor does not immediately refer to the topographical map within the exhibition hall.

It accompanies a time lag caused by stateless online connections. Through this setup, Worlding··· critically reconsiders the superiority of simultaneity assumed by real-time media. At the same time, the shell-like nature of the VR body comes to the fore, related to the image of the body being exhausted.

References