Pick up a video game controller. Put on a virtual reality headset. And suddenly you are in a strangely proportioned 3D space made up of fragments of the interiors of homes from all around the world captured during the COVID lockdown. Meanwhile, you hear a voice talking about the quarantine. Use the controller to select one of the objects in this strange environment to access a new space. And continue experiencing these encounters from the inside, as if you were really there.
This is, in broad strokes, what will be offered by the artistic virtual reality and interactivity project co-created by Joan Soler-Adillon , a professor in the UOC's Faculty of Computer Science, Multimedia and Telecommunications , when it is exhibited for the first time at two major festivals in Paris and Copenhagen. The project, which is called The Smallest of Worlds , is "a reflection on the value of private space, which takes you to strange places, as if you were in a dream or some kind of spatial poem" , explains Soler-Adillon.
The Catalan artist, who is an expert in interactive communication and digital art, created it with the Austrian architect Uwe Brunner and the German stage designer Bettina Katja Lange. The title, as Soler-Adillon says, is a play on words: "Everyone's world has become smaller and the world is small because the same thing is happening everywhere". That is, we have been at home more than ever, establishing a new relationship with intimacy within its walls, while also, in many cases, showing our inner sanctums to others more than ever, via social media, video calls and virtual work meetings.
Soler-Adillon adds that The Smallest of Worlds is also an example of practice-based research : "We wanted to experiment with flash fiction; we wanted to see if there were stories that would not work as conventional documentaries that could be told with virtual reality ; we asked ourselves how we could create fragmented, unrealistic environments with which people could also make an emotional connection. The piece has been warmly received, and in April it will receive its premiere at two of Europe's leading festivals , where the state of affairs has forced the artists to present two different versions.
There, The Smallest of Worlds can be seen in its online version. The project has also been nominated as a finalist at DOK. Where are the environments that appear in The Smallest of Worlds from? They are compositions created from a selection of more than videos sent by people from all around the globe in response to the three artists' call for volunteers to capture their intimate spaces in images.
