Jiachen Zhou | Bhavacakra: The Reincarnation of Virtual Avatars in VR

 
Bhavacakra is an interactive VR experience that puts the audience in the perspective of a virtual avatar’s spiritual existence to go through the multiple stages of death, bardo, and rebirth under a Buddhism context in VR. With the advancement of virtual-related technology(eg: Snapchat camera filters, Metaverse, Massive Multiplayer Online Game, etc), people are getting more used to creating their virtual avatars on various platforms and this trend has become an essential part of our daily lives. However, the server capacity and people’s initial desire of pursuing newer things determine that these virtual avatars are short-lived, either abandoned or dead with the server shut down. Such irrefutable facts provide people with the opportunity to envision what these artificial lives will experience after death or abandonment and to reflect on it, thus reshaping their relationship with virtual avatars. This project, hence, provides one possibility of examining this process in the Buddhism context, a religion well-known for its inclusiveness and philosophical thinking.
The project includes a three-stage experience structure that allows the audience to immerse themselves in the setting. The first scene featured sandy environments and boulder formations allowing the audience to experience the accumulation process of karma, getting prepared for the later storytelling. The second stage of void forces players to wear the shoes of virtual avatars to overcome what they were emotionally attached to in the past life, which is followed by the conversation with King Yan, the one in charge of the impermanence of reincarnation, to come to a trial. Eventually, the audience will be shown the six domains representing the possibility of reincarnation to get inspired as the way to attain nirvana in this endless cycle of suffering.
By constructing this reincarnation process under the Buddhism context in VR, compared with other religions which might be exclusive to the creature of modern technology, it’s possible to discuss the issue more from a highly-conceptual level, benefiting from Buddhism’s nature of delivering all creatures from torment. Moreover, the VR setting, by comparison with other traditional mediums like film, music, broadcasting, etc, provides the audience with a more immersive experience, thus more likely to provoke their reflection towards their relationship with virtual avatars and reshape it.