Phantom
2021
VR Experience, Body Awareness, Avatar, Mption Capture, Unity3d
VR Experience, Body Awareness, Avatar, Mption Capture, Unity3d
Phantom is a narrative Virtual Reality game that allows users to experience multiple alternative bodies. Taken on a fantasy journey, the audience controls a shape-shifting avatar in real-time to question the limits and potentials of their own body and self. The project was showcased at the Ars Electronica exhibition, London 2021.
Credit: Kexin Ling, Jingnan Liu
Concept
In interacting with the world, the body’s sensorium gives rise to a wide array of emotions, feelings, thoughts, including how we feel about ourselves and our beauty. The design concept is to experience a shapeshifting body to question the sense of self. In the design process, Phantom experimented with body extensions and modifications, physical and virtual, to explore and challenge the boundary of the human body.
The piece created manifests a VR world that allows users to overcome the monster of the self-and-society-driven judgment of body and self. In the VR experience, players travel on a route through a mysterious world and learn how to move a ‘new’ body with which they can explore different movements, ascend to the sky, and free their sense of self from being contained within society’s view of bodies.
Narrative
We made a story
about a girl who falls into a mysterious world. At here, she leaves her physical body behind and must transfer to a new container, which she can manipulate its shape to suit her needs.
The story is based on the "Overcoming the Monster" plot of storytelling, where the monster is metaphorically represented by various fantastical landscapes that players must navigate using the shape-shifting body. Players need to explore different movements, ascend to the sky, and follow the guidance to retrieve the character's lost inner pieces.
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The story is based on the "Overcoming the Monster" plot of storytelling, where the monster is metaphorically represented by various fantastical landscapes that players must navigate using the shape-shifting body. Players need to explore different movements, ascend to the sky, and follow the guidance to retrieve the character's lost inner pieces.
Design Process
Stage1: Playing With Body Modification Perception Illusion
Stage2: Experience a Shapshifting Virtural Avatar
Control a shapeshifting avatars using real-time motion capture by HTC Vive Trackers and final IK
Stage3: Build a Mysterious World of Body Awareness
Taking inspiration from bodily landscapes, the environment is crafted as a secluded island encircled by a group of towering giants. The spring located at the heart of the island could potentially be linked to the emptiness felt within the player's soul.
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Ars Exhibition | London | 2021
