Her Palace is a Virtual Reality simulation which provides an interactive and cinematic narrative. It features a female character and her intimate self-reflections on a relationship. Aiming to externalize an internal human cognitive process, the engagement of memory, this simulation bases its interaction design on theories of cognitive science. In rendering memory episodes as narratives, this simulation also reflects on the way narratives are actively constructed in the human mind. This project brings awareness to the mediation processes of both external mediums and internal cognitive mediums like memory and narrative construction. In simulating these two internal processes, this project hopes to reveal that both intrinsically stage the dialectical contradictions between “disconnection” and “reconnection”. Memories symbolize reconnection and disconnection simultaneusly–it is the way we reconnect with our past, but its very own existence is also a proof that we are eternally disconnected with the time when these memories took place. In this experience, the narrative is actively constructed by the user’s gazes. Gazes trigger fragments of intentionally disconnected narrative beats, and the coherent narratives are only constructed in the interactors’ minds by reconnecting these fragments. Different gazing behaviors constructs new narratives, just like reconnecting the disconnected constructs new connections. The simulation of these two internal processes hopes to stage the contradictions and complexities of the contemporary human-media relationship by raising many questions but providing no answer.
- 1 view