Returning... as...

Returning... as...

This takes place in a virtual reality space with a black, silhouetted foreground. The application can be sideloaded onto a Meta Quest 1-3. Quest 1 is preferred, as its screen shows the darkest black.

The landscape is coming toward you. With you, your neighbors look out from their balconies. The time of day is always sunset. Bodies disappear and re-appear in different forms.

The future arrives like waves and washes things away. Entities like fireflies move and flash in the darkness. They buzz when you touch and transform when you grasp them: a body, a parasite, dirt.

Each body is in a state of transition. Some have roots and mud. Some are moved by mysterious, microscopic processes.

Disaster repeats and death transforms, both of which you are watching happen from a frozen point in the ongoing collapse. The darkness obscures the details that might illuminate what happened up until now.

You and your neighbors are separately all staring vacantly at the horizon. You can feel the vibrations of the memories of this place through your hands.

This project was created in the open-source Godot game engine, with visuals created with Krita, Blender, MakeHuman and iPi Soft motion capture.

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The software showed as an interactive VR installation at the 2025 MeaningfulXR Conference at the University of California, Davis, and was part of the ASLE Arcade at the 2025 conference of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment. It was also selected for an online exhibition as part of Everywhen, the 2024 conference of the International Symposium on Electronic Art.

Screenshots exhibited at BINNAR Festival, Casa-Museu Soledade Malvar, Vila Nova de Famalicão, Portugal, 2021.