Control Negative

“While working on an earlier VR project, I was intrigued by the moments when the medium was revealing itself; when immersion was disturbed. These moments are generally perceived as undesirable in interactive experiences, something you might think of as a software bug. These moments reveal the façade and make the experience seem no longer ‘real.’”

“I asked myself why these moments seem more interesting than a convincing illusion. These moments of disorder reminded me of experiences of loss which distort our perception of reality, when everything we have grown accustomed to suddenly changes. In my case, I thought about the death of my father and the loss of control connected to it. Losing control, I realized, was a feature of both the disrupted VR experience and the real experience of loss.”

“I want to create moments of confusion, where you are lost a bit. At the same moment, you can experience two different emotions at once. Such “conflicts” are interesting and I think they put you in a position where you can refocus on your inner self. It’s not so easy to create this kind of tension, because we as humans want to simplify things. We want to recreate reality, but with only one path. These moments when we are not simplifying our experience are very precious.”

“Space is very important. I realized that the house structure at the beginning of the experience is a visualization of my own inner experience. In a certain sense, the house is also me. I think I’m extremely sensitive to space, in general, and I think the house at the beginning is about creating a certain space; an extension of myself. I feel like it’s a part of me. And it’s part of you in the experience.”

“I want to achieve a very specific state: you are ‘here’ in terms of presence, but you don’t have influence anymore. You can act, but your actions are not changing anything in long run. From the wider perspective they are irrelevant. Instead of escaping to another story, another reality, you are in the here-and-now, but your agency is only realized through gentleness and slowness. And it’s only for you. You know that you can’t change the whole thing. This is a state of acceptance without control. It’s control negative.”