PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
1.Background
In late 2021 and early 2022, I visited a historical building over 100 years old on East Beijing Road, adjacent to the Bund—a waterfront area and a protected historical district in Shanghai. Due to ongoing gentrification policies, all previous residents were forced to relocate. By using photogrammetry technology to reconstruct a virtual environment and leveraging an asymmetric mechanism for interactive storytelling, this project explores an original way of immersive storytelling, unfolding the relationship between interactivity and the archive. Different archival materials interweave in this reconstructed synthetic space, such as archive photos taken in the 1940s in Shanghai from the LIFE Photo Collection, music from “Spring in a Small Town” (1948), and interviews with the elderly who had lived in this building for more than half a century. The past is not a preserved order but is reformulated through audience interaction, channeling between past and present and fiction and reality.
2.About
East Beijing Road is an asymmetric VR installation that reimagines the stories of a building with a history spanning over 100 years in Shanghai, China, whose residents were compelled to move out due to an ongoing gentrification policy. The project addresses the perceptions of the past and present, the fluidity of archives, and the meanings of ruins. A syn- thetic space was reconstructed based on 3D photogrammetry models captured in this building. The audience, both inside and outside VR, must use distinct interfaces and experience different visual presentations to collaboratively unfold the story. Old and new, digital and analog, real and fictional, and virtual and physical elements interweave. The asymmetri- cal design in interactive storytelling blends different times and spaces, allowing the re-enactment of the past through audience collaborative actions, raising questions about the relationship between interactivity and the visibility of the past. Asymmetry VR can be defined as “co-located users access the same virtual environment using different kinds of technology”. This project deploys the characteristic of asymmetric VR and provides an experience of unstable, unbalanced, and incomplete information among audiences inside and outside VR. The imbalances and incompleteness in media design are a metaphor for the fragmented time and space inherent in the archival practice of unveiling the past in the digital epoch. No complete information is visible with- out collaboration between the audiences inside and outside VR. It is an embodied experience that the past can only be revealed through collaborative interaction. The story of the building on East Beijing Road becomes a form of repertoire because of the collaborative engagements of the audiences.
Images of the Building on East Beijing Road After Resident Moving Out
Asymmetric Mechanism Design Flow Chart
IMAGE & VIDEO:
1.Screenshot Images
2.Trailer
3.Walk-Through Video
4.Prototype Installation
MORE:
1.More About this Project’s Concept in Asymmetric Media Design:
Asymmetric VR Installation and Repertoire: Time and Space in Collaborative Interaction
*To be published at 2024 ISEA Proceedings (In Press)
Abstract: In contrast to most of the asymmetric media research in HCI that centers on the efficiency of collaboration, this paper ex- plores the utilization of asymmetric Virtual Reality (VR) in- stallations in storytelling to capture the fragmented time and space inherent in archival materials. I will use my VR project “East Beijing Road” as a case study to discuss how the asym- metric mechanism aligns with the concept of repertoire and enhances storytelling by merging disparate time and space through audiences’ collaborative interactions.
Key words: Asymmetric VR, Repertoire, Archive, Interactive Storytelling
OTHER INFORMATION:
Exhibition
XCOAX (Conference on Computation, Communication, Aesthetics & X)
July 10th - 12th, 2024
Fabrica, Italy
FIVARS (Festival of International Virtual and Augmented Reality Stories) Official Selection
October 3rd - 8th, 2024
Toronto, Canada
SIGGRAPH Asia XR Theatre
December 3rd - 6th, 2024
Tokyo, Japan
Slamdance Film Festival DIG Program
February 20th - 26th, 2025
Los Angeles, United States
Director
Credits
3D modeller: Haoran Chang
Photogrammetry: Haoran Chang (with supports from my friends Yuqi, Yuemin, and Yanqi)
VR programmer: Haoran Chang
16mm Bolex Footage: Haoran Chang
Super 8 Footage: Yuqi Wang
Contact
Instagram @ haoranchang
Email: tylerchang.hr@gmail.com