Haoyu Gao | Our Quarantine Room: An interactive documentary on quarantine

 
How has the COVID-19 pandemic changed our life so far? How are we distanced from each other during the pandemic physically, socially, emotionally, through social distancing and quarantine experiences including self-quarantine, group quarantine, and city lockdowns? Does Digital space help to reduce that distance or increase?

To explore how digital approaches may help people regain and develop empathetic thinking from each others’ perspectives, Our Quarantine Room is a web-based interactive documentary that allows users to experience collected multiple individuals’ quarantine memories during the COVID-19 pandemic through immersive and participatory experiences in a simulated online meeting. Based on video and audio recordings collected from fifteen online interviews conducted by the directors with participants in Chinese and English all over the world, the project tends to link these participants’ quarantine experiences through sharing elements and comparing views, therefore engage the audience with the inspirations of the similarities and differences they may as well share with the speakers. The audience may choose to enjoy a chorale of various voices in a cyber-confession room, dig in and listen close to one specific memory or experience, or read a humanist found poems by diving into multiple monologues with one’s found logic. With the given power of a seeming host, the audience also has the freedom to raise different subjects for the interviewees to talk about and change the direction of the discussion by choosing among topics.

To enhance the experience during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the documentary is presented online so could be accessed by more individuals interested in such quarantine experiences, even those who may be currently quarantining, to join Our Quarantine Room to quarantine alone and together in a digital space. Moreover, the interface is designed as a minimalist online meeting with immersive background, therefore could encourage the audience to experience the documentary as a recreational activity of the director’s online interviews.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has been changing all aspects of our lives, leaving some of us quarantined in a space of memory, physics, and time of this global sharing experience. In this context, Our Quarantine Room aims to bring digital accompanies for those who have been quarantined, being quarantined, to be quarantined.
Special thanks to J.H.Moon and Yanyue Yuan in many aspects of production including technical development and design improvements.