TEMPORAL WORLD

2023

Interactive virtual reality experience, custom-haptic jacket, video projection

Runtime: 20 to 30 minutes

“Temporal World” is a generative, haptisonic virtual reality exhibition in which the artist reflects on making meaning in a place where she has no personal history. We are guided to slow down while exploring Berlin and beyond in our increasingly accelerated time.

This VR world emphasizes the ephemerality of memory, where visitors explore and shape a landscape that is as fragmented and fickle as memory itself while wearing a one of a kind wearable art piece: the Temporal World haptic jacket. These new ways of sensing create a deeper understanding of our interactions and the often invisible dynamics in our environments.

This project was supported by the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity« Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, and has been exhibited at festivals and exhibitions globally, which included a month-long solo exhibition at OKK as a part of Vorspiel Festival in Berlin and at SXSW 2023.

A man in a VR headset tries the Temporal World VR experience.

Temporal World: A Haptisonic Virtual Reality Memory World at Silent Green in Berlin, Germany. Vorspiel Opening Night, January 2023.

To begin, the participant is guided into the haptic jacket.

This wearable art piece is a collaboration with fashion designer Dru Blumensheid of Bumesi.

The jacket’s arduino system is based on the “Haptic Hanbok”, by Fardin Gholami, Maxime Le Calvé, and Yoonha Kim.

From the outside it appears as streetwear. Inside, it houses an haptic feedback with 42 motors, which live translates sound made by the user in the VR world to vibrational feedback felt on their body; from the neck and shoulders to the wrists and waist.

To accomodate as many people as possible with one jacket, it uses a double-layer sleeve design, adjustable for bodies of all shapes and sizes.

A photo taken of the inside of my grandfather’s ancestral home in Hoisan, China is printed on silk fabric and lines the inside of the jacket. The significance of the memory is not seen from the outside of the jacket but felt against our body.

Temporal World: A Haptisonic Virtual Reality Memory World at Silent Green in Berlin, Germany. May 2024 for A.MAZE Festival.

Temporal World: A Haptisonic Virtual Reality Memory World. Inner lining of custom haptic jacket.

Temporal World: A Haptisonic Virtual Reality Memory World

The virtual world is composed of 3D photogrammetry scans and binural, generative soundscapes from Berlin, New York City and Hoisan, China; places that I have varying levels of connection to.

Photo: 3D scan of the inside of my grandfather’s ancestral home in Hoisan.

Visitors are encouraged to discover new ways of moving; bending down, dancing, moving through a space. Touching small, everyday objects reveals places of larger personal significance.

Visitors are encouraged to discover new ways of moving; bending down, dancing, moving through a space. Touching small, everyday objects reveals places of larger personal significance.

A custom hand gesture allows one to ‘jump’ in virtual space. The user feels vibrational feedback on their body that mimics the air turbulance occurs when moving quickly through a space.

Temporal World: A Haptisonic Virtual Reality Memory World at SXSW in Austin, Texas, USA.

Despite the water saturated air, crumbling begins at the fringes. I wonder: how do we keep these crumbling moments? Once they are not-so-perfect anymore, we crush the mud leaves into the ground, mix them back into the pool of mud that bore them. Soon that will also be gone, enveloped by a shadow under a durian tree.

Everyday, though we may not see it, our smallest interactions shape and leave a trace on the world around us. In Temporal World, visitors explore an ephemeral memory world inspired by places that have varying levels of connection to me; from the personal, to the familial to the foreign.

In the experience, visitors meet Ismail, a Turkish flutist and nomad who I met while walking through Berlin. As an Asian-American artist, I have explored themes of migration, beginning with my own family’s history. I moved to Berlin to explore what it meant to find connection in a place I had no personal history.

While this VR world is composed of 3D-scanned places and sounds from my personal archive, it reacts to visitors' actions. Eventually, through the act of walking, people make their own path, which generates underneath them. The aim was to engage one’s sense of discovery and agency. How can sensing in new ways create a more nuanced understanding of how we make meaning?

We hear our movements shift the soundscape, and vibration is felt on the body with a custom haptic jacket.
Walls melt as we move too quickly, and glitchy, almost indiscernible figures are sculptable with our virtual particle hands. These new ways of sensing help make often invisible interactions visible.

Participants are pushed to slow down and be more conscious. A dreamy subway track may sound familiar to Berliners as it echoes over an abstracted Tempelhofer Feld. Touching a seemingly mundane lemon, takes one to Hoisan, China, into my family’s ancestral home. In New York people explore the place I called home for 10 years as it becomes foreign to me. Together, these memories embrace a multiplicity that represents different parts of myself, and I hope that through my experiences others can reflect on their own.

As we journey, details of previously visited places appear with more clarity. This virtual world is not unlike our physical world; with distance and time we often gain clarity. This project is an embracing of temporality, Although the places, people and things that hold the essence of meaning are impermanent, the trace left behind can always be reimagined into something new.

I found meaning and community in Berlin in the process of making this project and that is reflected in Temporal World. People can meet Lucas who developed this project with me, and Dru who fabricated the jacket. After the experience participants will also have the option to be 3D scanned into the world, leaving their own trace.