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Daisy Chain of Immaterial Spirits is an immersive augmented reality piece newly commissioned by StudioLab for Embodied Media at Arts University Plymouth and made during our artist fellowship. During the artist fellowship we were kindly given access to their facilities amazing Hololens 2, an augmented reality headset technology. These mixed reality glasses offer an amazing potential for presenting narrative in exciting, atypical and immersive formats. It was a brilliant experience to experiment with the headset during the fellowship and a great opportunity to be able to develop a new piece specifically for the device whilst on our fellowship. As artists who regularly work with mixed reality and wish to push the boundaries of immersive experience having the opportunity to do so with access to these headsets has been very helpful. We look forward to presenting this new work to the public at a forthcoming exhibition in Plymouth this autumn. Please see documentation of process and creative development to get a sense of this work since it cannot be experienced online and only with a hololens headset.
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In this AR experience the user encounters the fictional avatar Soulnite and several of their past derivatives (versions of themself). The user must activate this experience by tapping the bubble that encapsulates Soulnite, when it is popped a ‘daisy chain of immaterial spirits’ springs out of Soulnite. With immersive sound, the user can examine each of the derivatives and their unique personas as life size digital avatars in the real world in front of them.
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Soulnite is a character who was first imagined in an ongoing project of ours called ‘Morphogenic Angels’. This is a world building project imagining life and the metaverse in 500 years from now, where simulations are how Angels (upgraded humans) experience the world and their lives. In this imagined world Soulnite is inside a simulation and using a technology that enables them to visualise both their consciousness and the consciousness of others through reactive bubbles that coalesce and expand but also engulf and warp each others perspective, ultimately shaping their movement through the world. The technology also allows them to track their derivatives; with every new experience and encounter, a duplicate of themself is created and each new duplicate has an alteration that the previous version didn’t have. This happens continuously and over long periods of time it creates a sense of loosing oneself, not knowing who they were previously. We treat ourselves as though we are a material or solid thing. We have coded it to make us think that we are ‘a self’, a living being that exists in the present moment with memories. We are really a daisy chain of immaterial spirits, stretching through the fabric of space and time, beyond our physical bounds and perception of what we can see and remember.
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It explores the representation of consciousness through bubbles, flexible fields of view which affect the shape of our movement and perception of the world around us as well as impacting the bubbles of others. It proposes how future technologies and simulations could allow us to see with greater clarity how our perspectives are formed and influenced through an alchemy of multiple perspectives interacting with one another. It also acknowledges that the self is iterative and that our iterations or derivatives don’t singularly grow or iterate forward, they divide and multiply outward in all directions creating a complex web of perception.
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This work is made, in part, through the support of the StudioLab for Embodied Media at Arts University Plymouth as part of the iMayflower project, supported by The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, who fund the Cultural Development Fund, which is administered by Arts Council England.
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