This project was led by Dean while working at Red Deer. Our client, DreamCorp, approached us with their own empirical research, revealing that VR inhabitants felt self-conscious. This negatively broke down their sense of in-game presence. As a remedy, we developed a brief for a more immersive experience by increasing privacy and introducing sensory interfaces. The concept is a threshold [portal] between the physical world and the virtual, which aims to disrupt the visitor’s sense of the everyday before they depart into VR via individual sensory immersion cylinders.

This experience exaggerates the inherent dichotomy of VR being digitally connected yet physically isolated. For those craving analogue interaction a narrow ribbon of communal tables offers a liminal experience. By stripping the site of its colour the Overground viaduct is conceived as a textural 3D canvas [hardware] onto which digitally mapped light [software] from the virtual world is projected as the main element. This allows the atmosphere to be controlled through pace, colour and brightness. By using fading colours to breakdown corners, angles and forms then direct lighting to punctuate them, the experience of the space is elusive, malleable and fluid, just like the virtual world the user is about to experience.