Author: Danni

 
On February 2nd, 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo moved the Mexican border southwest over 525,000 square miles. Without a choice in the matter, these Mexicans became American citizens despite never leaving their ancestral home. Since the creation of the first Chicanos, successive waves of immigration have led to a continual reframing of what it means to be both American and of Mexican descent. Chicanos live in a perpetual state of turmoil as they try to assimilate the values and practices of two conflicting cultures. This project aims to express the inability to define Chicanos using a static definition.
I have created an interactive sculpture that encourages users to learn about this culture while understanding its complexity. Like the pieces of a broken mirror from afar or an angle, users see a seemingly scattered array of Mexican cultural items. However, closer inspection reveals objects/practices descended from Mexico, inspired and reimagined in the United States, or imagine an ideally perfect balance between the two cultures. Working on this piece, I have naturally come to wonder how culture is mixing across other borderlands. What does this look like between two countries with very similar histories and cultures? How do cultures mix across other types of borders such as within a country itself? Similar to my project’s insistence that there is no one depiction of a Chicano, how do you define people in a world with increasingly more immigration? t what point is a culture something unique as opposed to simply two identities working in tandem? While this project does not and can not answer any of these questions, it leaves it to the audience to ponder what a future society may look like. Will borderlands and their cultures cease to exist after human culture has dissolved into one uniform existence? Or will increasing populations with unlimited potential for international communication lead to even more cultural identifiers? Either way, it is important to preserve these experiences to inform future generations.

 
The project is a unique Virtual Reality (VR) venture that I’ve christened as “MEmories”. This inventive title is a fusion of “ME” and “memories”, representing the core idea behind this endeavor – a deeply personal yet universal exploration of self and memory.
“MEmories” is an immersive VR experience, presenting an extraordinary visual representation of the users. In this surreal yet intimate environment, users are led to an unusual perception of themselves where their physical forms are articulated using particle systems and visual effects (VFX). This not only creates an illusion of transparency, making their internal organs visible, but it also allows for an engaging interaction.
Adding a unique twist to this interaction, each visible organ within the user’s virtual body is correlated to a significant memory from my own life. For example, if a user virtually removes their heart, they are instantly transported into a vividly poignant scene from my past – an experience of heartbreak that left an indelible mark on my existence.
The central objective of “MEmories” is to establish a deep and meaningful connection between the creator, which is myself, and the users. By transforming my personal experiences into an interactive narrative, my aspiration is to provoke potent emotions, simultaneously offering a profound, immersive exploration into the vital moments that have shaped my life.
This project serves as an experimental playground to demonstrate my technical prowess in VR and design. Nevertheless, it extends beyond being a mere exhibition of technical expertise. “MEmories” is indeed a personal and emotional journey, encapsulating a piece of my soul and life experiences. It’s my conviction that this amalgamation of technology with deeply personal storytelling has the potential to create experiences that are not only engaging but also carry a profound emotional resonance. I strive to bring forth an experience that transcends the boundaries of VR as we know it, enabling a deeper connection between the creator and the users.

 
The original goal of this research is to explore how can a game arouse moral emotions among players with less scripted contents. And this work basically reaches the goal. As we can see, the interface is rather simple, so it forces the players to focus on the mechanics. During the playing, the players will get to know each character better gradually, find out how easy or difficult it is to kill them, and experience different endings according to their choice. Moral emotions in games are aroused by mechanics with scripted contents added, and except those moral emotions that can be evoked by the narrative part alone, mechanics should also have a unique role in the process of evoking moral emotions in games. This project is investigating the principles and quantities of how scripted content should be added on game mechanics in order to arouse moral emotions.
The game is built on the concept of cannibalism in the extreme situation and the moral dilemma contained in such situations, and based on a real case happened in 19th century. It is designed with a rich economic system, and art assets in minimalized design, in order to reach the goal of testing how players can be aroused by game mechanics. This project also contains an introduction video made by stop motion animation, to avoid the players being too less informed, I also made a stop motion animation as an introduction or trailor, and is displayed separately.
The game flow is short, but there are many possibilities and different endings, which are supposed to attract players to repeat playing and exploring the game. In this process, players will get to know the mechanics better, and are also invited to add scripted contents to the game spontaneously with their imagination based on their own experience. With the brutal or hopeless ending are gradually shown to the players, the goal of arousing moral emotions could be reached. This project not only tries to provide a fun and think-requiring playing experience, but also willing to arouse deeper feelings and reflections to its audience.

 
BEING AROUND is a multi-user interactive experience that seeks to contextualize real-life human interactions in screen-based virtual reality where co-presence happens and brings mutual influence. Through a variety of theories and effects, the presence of others has been studied in various fields and proved influential to people’s real-life behaviors. Such dynamics become further complicated as media technologies rapidly advance in the current era, when human communications and interactions are pushed to be digitized. In particular, the concept of virtual reality has been frequently juxtaposed with authentic reality for comparison. This project, hence, mediates co-presence between virtual and reality with dynamic visuals and provokes introspection on its mutual influence in a more sensual manner.
The project consists of an installation with four laptops for interaction, four headphones and a projection displaying project context and instruction. Each laptop displays one distinct yet interconnected virtual world, symbolizing the diverse, subjective perceptions individuals hold of the same world. Up to four participants can engage with one another simultaneously, embodied as intangible lights of random colors that illuminate their respective black-and-white virtual environments. To facilitate navigation, webcams on each laptop tracts participants’ eye and shoulder positions, enabling a first-person perspective movement encompassing upward, downward, leftward and rightward directions. As participants get close to each other virtually, auditory and lighting effects will be triggered, highlighting the mutual influence and subsequent impact on their individual characteristics. Speaking of the installation, one mirror covers the laptop keyboards at the bottom, and another covers screens from the top. Through such design, an infinite reflection of the laptop screens is generated, therefore extending the laptop screens meanwhile manipulating the boundary between virtual and reality not only conceptually but also physically.
The sharp comparison between vibrant colors and infinite black-and-white imagery shifts the perception of co-presence from a physical sensation to a sensory vision, thereby reinforcing the audience’s awareness of others being present. As participants approach each other virtually, their light intensities fluctuate rhythmically. The longer they remain in close proximity, the more frequently they flicker. By highlighting such mutual influence of people casting on each other, whether consciously or not, the project re-emphasizes the real-life impact of co-presence in a more sensual way, at the same time encouraging deeper reflections within mediated virtual reality.