Homecoming VR

June 2023

An immersive VR dance experience featuring AI pattern recognition. Developed in collaboration with Georgia Tegou and Dance-as-Design studio and previewed at The Place London.

Description

The player is immersed in a surreal desert landscape, where without having a body, they navigate through memories of their past self. As they move forward, they come across certain golden objects - ornaments - the shape of which they need to replicate by moving to unlock their past and reconnect with their body. Each ornament reveals a memory of their journey so far expressed as a 360 dance video.

The 3D environment for this project was digitally constructed from scratch, through an iterative process of concept sketches coming to life through world-building tools. The user experience was completed through the implementation of various visual effects that enhanced the user interaction and the development of the narrative. A custom Image Classification Machine Learning Model was trained to enable the pattern recognition and enable the players to unlock memories and move forward in the experience.

Homecoming was developed and deployed for the standalone Oculus Quest 2 and was exhibited in a private preview at The Place, open to choreographers and digital artists. It is currently under the second stage of development to be presented in a broader audience on the spring of 2024.

Collaborators