Hyper-Short VR Experiences

Hyper-Short VR Experiences are singular interactive opportunities conducted in virtual space. As part of my Bachelor's thesis at the University of Applied Sciences Berlin, I conceived a design framework for "Hyper-Short Virtual Reality Experiences" and developed several VR Apps for HTC Vive in Unity3D that would follow these guidelines.

Stanley G. Weinbaum is one of the first people in the western hemisphere to aesthetically explore the concept of virtual reality. In his short-story Pygmalion's Spectacles, he depicts a virtual world that is just as real to the protagonist as the physical world.

Inspired by Weinbaum's depiction of virtual reality, in "Trapped!", the player finds themselves trapped inside a virtual cage. That is, until they realize the cage is not based in the physical reality and therefore a mere visual illusion. They can simply walk away. As such, Trapped! asks a fundamental question: What is the player in regards to the virtual world?

In contemporary VR, interactions often times feel awkard and rugged. While I do think that performing overtly clumsy maneuvers is tons of fun in popular games such as Surgeon Simulator et al., I believe it's worth it to explore how to design an interactive space that allows for more subtle and delicate interactions.

In materie_a: "delicate", the player interacts with an abstract spherical object that is composed of thousands of individual "bubbles". Upon touching them (or even just breathing next to them), the bubbles generate a highly nuanced feedback as they slowly vanish into thin air.

Harry Partch was a composer famous for his microtonal compositions. Inspired by his microtonal scale derived from the tonality diamond, I developed a microtonal diamond-shaped musical instrument that can be played in VR. All audio is binaural (based on the Steam Adio SDK) and all audio is procedurally generated at real time from PureData patches.

This was a solo project. As part of my Bachelor's thesis, I conceived the "Hyper-Short VR Experience" design framework and designed & developed various exemplary VR apps in Unity3D.