VR Scene : Prologue
Moveable devices for restricting the user's posture
Ovah is a mixed reality experience. A VR experience in physically restrained conditions. The inspiration of Ovah is ball culture and its important dance genre, voguing. The name “ovah” means excellent in the cultural context. It was exhibited on Austra eletric art festival in June 2022
Personal Contribution: VR design & development
Team member: Teng Xue (Hardware & physical installation development)
Ball culture originated in the last century when the LGBTQ+ and people of colour were marginalized and even ostracized by mainstream society and their own families. In response, they formed new families, known as “houses.” They held underground parties where they dressed in vibrant costumes and danced voguing in a relatively safe environment to express themselves freely.
By observing this subculture’s participants, we have seen a sense of contradiction between confinement and liberation in their lives. In the social context, they are constrained as a minority group, but within the heavy confinement, they come together to seek liberation. Once they enter their party spaces, they are briefly free. In order to document and encourage this spirit, we have created this mixed reality project.
Ovah consists of a virtual and a physical component. In the experience process, the participant will wear a physical device, a VR headset and a glove with flex sensors that gauges how far the fingers bend. The physical device holds the participant in a still position while viewing the VR screen, with only hands being able to move. The sole controller for interacting with VR scenes is the glove. Thus, The paradox between physical restraint and spiritual liberation is produced.
Ovah is also a play. Based on the five elements of Voguing (Hands, Duckwalk, Catwalk, Floor Performance and Spins & Dips), I designed five scenes in VR, including a prologue and four acts. In the different acts, The physical device can be transformed into different shapes and holds the participant in the corresponding poses.
For example, when Act 2, the Catwalk scene, begins, the participant‘s posture will change from Duckwalk (Act 1) to Catwalk as the physical device transforms. As though their body and eyes are watching the play in parallel.
Ovah is my graduate project in UCL.
The full design and development process is detailed in 2022_Ovah_Portfolio.key (Keynote file, 2.17GB)