Description of the experience

Symbiosis is a virtual reality installation by Dutch experience design collective POLYMORF. It aims to explore the potential of symbiotic relationships between humans and other living entities, both present and future, on a physical, emotional, and spiritual level. The installation offers a performative and multi-sensory experience, in which participants can embody post-human or non-human realities through different stories. Participants choose a character and role in the story world, and all characters come together in a shared food experience at the end. The installation also includes soft robotic wearables that allow for haptic interactions between the physical and virtual body. Overall, Symbiosis aims to use VR as a theatrical and philosophical tool to explore the possibilities of symbiotic relationships and their impact on coexistence, legal rights, and relationships between humans and other living entities.

Link to Site: https://www.polymorf.nl/interaction/symbiosis/

My Experience and analysis

This experience has a lofty goal of providing an experience that transcends human experience bringing the user into the territory of experiencing other living creatures in a form of imposed symbiosis. Symbiosis uses many different technologies to accomplish this including custom made haptics, VR, and custom smells, taste and audio connected to the VR.

Onboarding started with a brief overview of the experience and a backstory of the six different organisms. Since there are six organisms there are six participants. We were instructed to choose who will be which organism democratically between ourselves which didn’t take too long. I ended up as an artificial intelligence attached to two other organisms. Assistants helped us into the leather haptics suits and but on the VR headsets and once were were all in the experience started. Each experience was different so I can only reflect on the Artificial intelligence experience. There were electronic sounds, and the visuals were moving particles with lines connected to them which created moving geometric shapes with a white expansive background. There was also informational pop-ups every so often which contained information about the existence of molecules and s bar that indicated synthesizing molecules together.

Narrative

There wasn’t a coherent narrative for the Artificial intelligence experience and it was unclear what the haptics signified. There was only one place where there was pressure which was on my hands which were fastened by the haptics suit behind my back. The lack of visual audio or smell connection to the physical pressure on the hands was confusing since it didn’t tie into any narrative. The visuals were pretty constant throughout the experience which didn’t reveal the narrative either. Only after hearing what the AI was doing after the experience, I completely knew what that narrative was. The AI was collecting food and feeding the other two symbiotic organisms it was attached to, and since the haptics suit of the AI was attached to two other suites I was able to infer that I was performing some function for the other two organism. Overall it was unclear how the narrative and experience of all organisms converged which is what I was hoping for. Instead there was a feeling of having a very separate experience than everyone else that wasn’t connected. The use of the smell was a little overwhelming and was disorienting since it wasn’t clear what the smells signified, and the only two components of the experience that connected to the narrative were the visuals and audio even though there still wasn’t a traditional or obvious narrative. I saw the visuals in the other experiences after completing the experience and it seems like there is more of a narrative and more varied visuals in the other organisms experiences.

Regardless, this experience is meant to not be comfortable and not to have a coherent narrative since it is trying to simulate symbiosis and other organisms so the lack of coherent narrative likely is a design choice.

Use of Technology

I think that the use of the VR was very standard and was created using unity. The audio was accompanying the visuals. The use of smell at least for the artificial intelligence experience was custom created as well as the haptics, but since it didn’t connect to a narrative in a coherent way it was confusing and felt more like a tech demo. I think this was a great mechanism for haptics and the custom suits that configured the user’s body in a way to mimic the organism is one of the most unique and creative design features that immerse the user in a world. I think that adding a more interactive componet to the experience would make it come to life. The visuals haptics and audio were all passive, but as an organism, one experiences stimuli in response to interacting with the world around them, so this would make more sense for the experience to have all of the five senses stimulated from the user interacting uniquely with the environment.

Overall this experience was a one of the kind that demonstrates more fringe uses and applications of immersive technology and how all five senses can be incorporated into an experience.