LIMINAL SPACE

This Mixed Reality experience evolved from a series of drawings (POSTCARDS) done in transitory spaces like waiting for the bus, or on the train. They were a way of appreciating the beauty in liminal moments and made apparent how pervasive technology can be in numbing our senses and avoiding the real world. 

 

One of the easiest and most comfortable escapes from reality is through technology. Whether that is through your phone, laptop, or a VR headset, it is often very addictive, sucking you in and numbing you more than you intended. However, with how immersive and affecting VR can be, it is a great tool through which to portray this concept, along with its emotions. The technology allows you to create a separate world, disconnected from the internet, with nothing addictive holding you there, simply a sense of waiting and external mindless existence into which you can momentarily escape and find a strange sense of peace and perspective. 

 

This experience takes you on a surrealistic journey with no end, holding you in this liminal space, a purgatory, a temporary escape from the real world. The dreamlike space itself is reminiscent of surrealist paintings by Dali, with large looming sculptures derived from the ‘Postcard’ drawings. 

 

While on the eternal train that drives you through this landscape, you can choose for yourself how much of reality you want to avoid by controlling the world with where your hands are positioned. This liminal space allows you to create your own version of reality and decide to what extent you want to escape.

 

A further sensory dimension you have control over with the positioning of your hands is the audio. You can choose how much of the real world to hear, and how much of the virtual liminal world. Using recordings made over time in these transitory moments, the audio track for the experience compiles background chatter and everyday sounds, some things repeated, and some momentary, to create an ever-present cacophony of noises that somehow feels monotonous, lulling you into this existence.