SUBMERGE

by David Kienpointner, Nathaniel Nutt, Moritz Riedl, Konrad Sonne

52HZ - WEIRD INTERMEDIATE BEINGS
Cenk Guzelis & Uwe Brunner
A Para-fictional VR Experience, 5 min, 2020

Submerge is a para-fictional VR experience, investigating the consequences of environmental pollution and overpopulation in an alpine region. A scenic construction of a speculative future in which yet unknown human activities, resulting from economic and ecologic instabilities, led to flooding and excessive warming of central Europe. These enormous shifts of local environmental conditions made most regional species extinct and transformed the former forests, cities and farmlands into an underwater world full of corrals and a growing number of previously exotic sea-creatures. The human habitats were raised to higher terrains, building hardly accessible settlements on the mountains, defined by a lack of infrastructure and the loss of its economic basis. On the ground of the sea, where they lived before, the only indications of humanity are ruins, the trash they throw away from their new settlements into the water and a few technological left-backs from a time when the human species could believe in a solution. In an environment, not accessible for humans, the main protagonist is a non-human creature, one of those now dominating this world. A fish, coming from the Indo-Pacific Ocean to Sector 6020, previously known as Innsbruck. By exploring the former old town of Innsbruck through the vision of a fish, more and more hints of how this area changed so drastically come up. It is an open world experience guiding freely through odd objects and fragments of history, reaching your own conclusion. By entering the world of Submerge, the visitor gets into a stranger’s body, changing his vision into a reduced but colorful abstraction. In this strange yet unknown body the visitor explores an environment full of spatial anomalies and fragmented information. More and more the mystery of his avatars self as well as the history of the world he jumped into become clear.

The work was developed during the Virtual Reality Seminar led by Cenk Guzelis and Uwe Brunner at the Institute of experimental architecture, ./studio3 in the University of Innsbruck. This VR artwork is co-presented by RadianceVR.co

52HZ - WEIRD INTERMEDIATE BEINGS
Cenk Guzelis & Uwe Brunner

What does it mean to escape from the human-centered visual regime?How does it feel to enter the sensory apparatus of an animal?Does the change of perspective create new empathic bonds between human and non-human?What is nowadays spatially and psychologically innovating? 
52 Hz explores the capability and inexhaustible power of our brains to adapt to any kind of imaginary scenario. Our ability for neuroplasticity coupled with the emerging tools to create immersive virtual environments opens up new and provoking ways to see and engage with the tangible and intangible world we inhabit. Under this condition (premise) students of ./studio3 -  Institute of Experimental Architecture, University of Innsbruck, Austria, explored during one semester possible ways of engaging with simulated animal visions in order to perceive their built environment from an unfamiliar point of view. They aimed at designing machinic eyes, interfacing with computer visions, and changing the perception from human to non-human. They stayed fleshed while allowed themselves to be wired in order to investigate how interactive interfaces can augment and convey human experience, interaction, and perception.