The Mutual Penetration of Physical and Virtual Bodies
The project started as a series of drafts researching the idea of placing one avatar inside another avatar or in other words, one avatar becoming a hyperreactive virtual shell for the second one. The first prototype of the project was created using customized Mozilla Hubs Platform during our participation in The Society for Arts and Technology's XR residency.
The Mutual Penetration of Physical and Virtual Bodies is an artistic research on the emerging forms of virtual-physical communications. It is an interactive environment for two users that are learning to communicate in a room using only their body’s language.
First user (Physical Body) is wearing a virtual reality headset and is presented as an avatar inserted into the space which is fully controlled by the second user (Digital Body). Using his body language, the second user is able to control the appearance of the room, employing it as a spatial communication device, replacing oral language with a language of non-orthogonal shapes and forms. Depending on the type of your device you can visit and experience the room in two ways:
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To observe the space as a Physical Body you can press Join Button and start interacting with the environment using a VR Headset or a Desktop Version. You can press Spectate Button in case there is already a user inside: https://satellite.sat.qc.ca/ktWzSMr/
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To influence the space as a Digital Body you can open an additional link and try changing the Room’s space with your hand’s gestures that are tracked by the upfront camera of your device. Please open this link in a Desktop Version: https://mutual-penetration-controller.web.app/?model=mediapipe_hands
The Mutual Penetration of Physical and Virtual Bodies is an installation designed for exploring new ways of interactions in virtual environment. It is also an investigation into the present day capabilities of Mozilla hubs platform. The space of the installation is live and hyperreactive because it is completely written by a code that is injected into a customized Mozilla Hubs version. We consider this project as a test ground and the first prototype of a fully interactive and updatable architecture built using WebXR technologies.
We want to thank Satellite Montreal team for a huge support and technological boost during the residency.
