Presence

Presence is an experiential VR installation investigating digital physicality. With the current technology, VR experiences mostly center on visual content. Presence explores being itself, without introducing any content. Having a body is an integral part of being human – how does that translate to digital reality?

Solo VR Experience, Public Viewing

Presence is a 6 minute solo VR experience. It takes participants on a guided meditation exploring digital physicality. The piece uses live depth data to generate a digital body. During the session the participant experiences how that body could be constructed – and deconstructed.

Technology

Presence streams, stores, manipulates and visualises live data from a depth sensor. - runs on Unity, across a desktop PC, Oculus Go, Arduino - realtime depth and skeleton data from Kinect Xbox 360 streamed to Oculus Go - custom encoding, storage and streaming of data - combines depth sensor with headset sensor to create 6 DOF experience - live 1st person data visualisation - live 1st person perspective view on desktop PC (for audience viewing and capture) - custom calibration of headset to real world using Arduino rig - multiple visualisations of depth data - detection of user behaviour Presence runs on a custom built Story Engine: - high level text based script allows for easy ‘storyline’ development across devices - branching for concurrent story lines - task based approach: tasks generated from script are synchronised across network - tasks can create a range of synchronised variables on the go - multiple task handlers for clear code structure (for example UX, IO, scene) - horizontal approach: every device and handler has equal authority over data - custom data serialisation and networking built on low level Unity API - network load balancing - easy creation of user interfaces that work across devices & network - low level TCP/IP packages and serial communication for (custom) hardware integration

Acknowledgements & Funding

Presence is being developed with support from the Creative Industries Fund. Special thanks to Studio Ferdinand in Amsterdam for use of their photography studio.