VR wearable sculpture

Title: Opticus

Pitch:

With vision being one of the most prominent characteristics of Virtual Reality, this piece aims to explore its purely visual aspect. By utilising mirrors and putting them over the eyes, the wearer experiences a sense of confinement, discomfort and further self-awareness.

Statement:

This project titled ‘Opticus’ aims to explore ideas of surveillance and confinement. Inspired by dystopian stories such as 1984’s and its concept of “Big Brother is watching you”, the project attempts to incorporate the idea of being watched through the use of mirrors. Modern innovations, such as Virtual Reality headsets, are also used as inspiration to add to the futuristic elements of the piece.

The project is composed of a headpiece with cage-like wooden panels covering the eye area, blocking the user’s vision towards the outside world and replacing it with the view of oneself through the interior mirrors. The person wearing this wearable sculpture will experience a sense of self-awareness, blocking the person from the reality that surrounds them and placing them into a private world of their own, facing oneself reflection. From an outsider’s perspective, the piece appears to be confining and claustrophobic, almost as if it were a torture device to the person wearing it. These two contradicting perspectives are held in consideration through the production of this piece and are intentionally considered to go along with our theme.

The piece is held together by bolts, nuts, hinges, and a headband as to make the mainly wooden piece wearable. The process includes strategically measuring the wood as to achieve the desired size for each piece, sawing the wood, and drilling the wood as to insert the bolts and hinges.

We initially decided to have four pieces, however, one of them did not fit in with the rest so we chose to use three instead