Modifications of R: how the virtual comes to matter in VR, XR and MR art and performance

Figures & data

Figure 1. The prologue room, a riverbank created with living plants, is the threshold to the Everywhen. I-ME’s voices are heard from speakers surrounding the visitor and hidden in the riverbank. I-ME says, “Life is a tidal river. Welcome, child, to the edge of the Everywhen, a place where all time is present. I am I-ME, your guide. Thousands of children are born in this moment. Each gasping for their first breath. You are one of them. Take a breath. I am archiving the days of your life, one child, one visitor like you, at a time.”⁴

Figure 2. I-ME guides the visitor to the next room with a large curved screen, and says ‘Child of Now lives on the Birrarung, the river of mists that has sustained and been sustained by the Wurundjeri and Boonwurrung people for so long it may as well be forever. Ten thousand years ago the river ran through a fertile plain to the sea.’ on screen, the 8-minute animation of 10,000 years of life on Birrarung river begins with the flooding of Naarm (Port Phillip Bay, Melbourne).

Figure 3. The animation depicts the actual location on the Birrarung where the visitor is co-located, but is shot from a giant’s perspective looking over the riverscape. I-ME says, ‘The world changes whether we like it or not. We make the best decisions we can. We grow. We change. Together.’ the animation speeds forward in time, pausing for six moments: flood, equilibrium, cultural burning (controlled bushfire), settler invasion, the visitor’s present, and a final moment in the future when the child born today is the visitor’s age.

Figure 4. A participant moves their body to create a holographic portrait of the decision they make as the Child of Now. I-ME says, ‘The plains are flooding with salt water, becoming a mighty bay. Change can come dangerously quickly and life must find a way to adapt. Time to act. You must choose. Perform the gesture to make a decision’.

Figure 5. Arriving in the present moment, looking over the current Birrarung River and City of Melbourne from the perspective of a giant stood where the participant is now, on Southbank looking north. ‘All across this land the next Children of Now are being born. Here in your present now. Listen to their first breaths’.

Figure 6. I-ME says, ‘Do you embrace/comfort/lookout for/protect/defend these children, despite not knowing how? Perform the gesture to make a decision.’ the visitor is introduced to gestures associated with possible decisions to take on behalf of the child of now. They decide with their body when they perform the action. Their movement is captured as a volumetric video (virtual hologram) portrait, processed, and replayed in VR a few minutes later in Room C.

Figure 7. A still from the on-screen animation depicting merging visions of two futures for the Birrarung river and Melbourne. I-ME says, ‘If you knew you were living in the last days of the human story, what would you do? How would you act? To save the Child of Now, face the world we are making. Hold both of these visions in your heart. Take a deep breath’.

Figure 8. ‘Psst. Over here. Follow my voice.’ I-ME guides the visitor to a calm room for speaking as the Child of Now. I-ME’s voices say, ‘The year is [current year + visitor’s age]. You are the Child of Now age [visitor’s age]. Feels strange/weird/obvious until you … remember we are in the Everywhen.’ (Note: variables in square brackets are replaced by words, e.g. 2044, age 42). I-ME asks a series of 30 questions and prompts for the visitor to respond to with short (6–10 seconds) voice recordings. When they are ready to answer, the visitor presses a button to start their recording. I-ME’s prompts include: Who knew life would be so … When and where did you last swim in a river? How can we face up to the reality that we are making our world unliveable? The world really changed when … I have only survived by… if I could send a message back to [current year], I’d say ….

Figure 9. I-ME’s voices say, ‘We share this beautiful/sexy/saggy/fat/thin/gorgeous/aging/young/weak/strong body. Whatever souls are made of ours are in this together. Me too/mine/mine too/ours/we’re connected/me/all of us/together/whether we like it or not/but we are different/similar but not the same/definitely not the same/completely different’.

Figure 10. I-ME’s voices say: ‘Psst. Over here. Come to the river, child. Where the stories of the people who lived a moment as the Child of Now are kept. Take a seat.’ the visitor sits in a boat and wears a HMD to experience the Child of Now archive in VR. The archive is represented by a river that contains 1000s of moments from the Child of Now’s life recorded by previous visitors arranged in age order from youngest to oldest. The boat submerges and travels along the riverbed. I-ME says, ‘At the river’s source, the child is just a baby, moments old, but will age like we all do, as life flows into the future. Let’s go a little faster, we have a long life to lead. Hold on!’.

Figure 11. VR still encountering a digital hologram beneath the river. The boat comes to a stop three times allowing the visitor to ‘Wake the memories by disturbing the riverbed.’ the first memory is close to the river’s source: a previous participant aged ten. Her virtual hologram and audio play when the visitor moves their hands to disturb the silt. The holograms and audio made by the visitor emerge further down the river. ‘You chose. You spoke. Actions make waves. Words ripple forever. Every breath you take matters.’ the final stop ‘is 2122. The child is almost 100. This river is ready to join the sea. Help it. Use your hands to dissolve the memory.’ the visitor’s gestures dissolve the hologram and the boat surfaces. The final image is the giant Child of Now overlooking the river. The giant’s body ages between the ten-year-old’s hologram, the visitor’s hologram, and the elder’s hologram then fades into the mist. The visitor removes the HMD and exits the boat. I-ME prepares them to return to their everyday life and bids them farewell. The visitor exits the Everywhen.