Memory Palace:
A Virtual Reality Exhibition
A PROJECT BY CHLOE LEE
CHLOE LEE - Director, Producer
LUCAS MARTINIC - Unity Experience Developer
DRU BLUMENSHEID (BUMESI) - Haptic Jacket Design & Fabrication
M. FARDIN GHOLAMI - Advisor, Hardware Design.
Associate Researcher at Matters of Activity.
VICTOR MINCES - Advisor, Spectrogram/Sound Integration.
Professor at University of California, San Diego.
ISAAC MUNOZ - Advisor, VR Interactive Sound Design.
Virtual Reality Sound Engineer at Qualcomm.
KARA LYNCH - Advisor. Installation Artist,
Professor at Hunter College, City University of New York.
MEMORY PALACE
Our physical surroundings, a world of objects, bodies, and structures, are not as solid as they seem to be. In the virtual reality exhibition, Memory Palace (working), visitors are invited to explore a virtual world that emphasizes the emphemality and impermanence of our environments and the similarly shifting nature of memory, playfully encouraging them to engage their senses in new ways. These new ways of engaging, and in turn understanding, help create a more nuanced and complex understanding of our interactions and, often invisible, dynamics within our everyday environments.
Inspired by the music of Ismail, a Turkish nomad and flutist who I met in Kreuzberg.
Early Memory Palace Virtual Reality Exhibition 3D Rendering, March 2022.
Exhibition will be in a blank white space: When buildings, people and objects are gone can the essence of their meaning be injected into a new space?
Step 1 - Arms into inner sleeves
Step 2 - Bass belt tied to waist
Step 3 - 3-finger glovettes
Step 4 - Chest tie secured
Step 5 - Motor adjustment on arms
Step 6 - Put headset on...and...
Studio Visits. August 2022.
INTRO TRANSITION
Guided entry into the virtual world
A listening and feeling exercise
While wearing a custom haptic jacket which sends vibrational feedback through the body, participants enter the Oculus headset to find a single-user virtual world composed of 3D scanned sights and soundscapes of Berlin.
SCENE 1
Explore the memory world of Ismail
Visitors learn to navigate the space and interactive elements. They explore a reactive environment layered with various memory objects from the artist and see walking particle bodies, traces of past visitors.
SCENE 2A
Agency to Create
Visitors create their own sound + haptic experience by walking and subsequently revealing their own path in a fragmented Tempelhof Feld inspired environment.
SCENE 2B
Playback of the visitor's creation
OUTRO TRANSITION
Becoming a trace memory
As they listen and feel their creation, particles begin to stream out from the center of the visitor’s
body forming a figure in front of them. They come to understand this figure is a trace of them, and that a part of themselves will become part of this virtual reality memory.
HAPTIC JACKET MOTOR PLACEMENT
MEMORY PALACE HAPTIC JACKET, PROTOTYPE 1.0
Jacket translates sound from the virtual world to vibrational feedback on the user's body on 42 points on the upper body, including the neck, arms, finger tips. The design also includes a bass belt.
PHENOMENAL WOMAN, A POEM BY MAYA ANGELOU
Created in Hans Tammen's zoom performance class
A collaboration between Maxine Montilus, Yehui Zhao, Maiya Redding and Chloé Lee.
FOUR ELEMENTS
Created in Hans Tammen's zoom performance class
A collaboration between Sage Rivera, Yenna Jung and Chloé Lee.