As our digital reality and physical reality is becoming increasingly entangled, social media today has become an essential method of building connections with others. Our online identity is constantly influenced by mass information, whilst our opinions also influence this vast information world in cyberspace. Adolescents and young people are especially reliant on platforms such as Instagram & Tiktok to form their sense of identity, leading to difficulties in self-identity construction unique to Gen Z.

CHAMBER404 provides a first-person experience allowing users to empathise with young users navigating through the obscure cyberworld with changing online identities. It is a story about an online user finding and switching their identities in a nightmare with no exit. Telling the story from our unique perspective of East Asian female, artists living and working in London, Chamber404 explores disorientation and confusion in the process of self-identity construction through pressure to perform, social obligations, the dissolving of work and life privacy online and display of sexuality.

 

Chamber404 Project Film

The idea to use webVR emerged from the start of the pandemic – in the webspace where corporal constraint is minimised. We also attempt to use a combination of both voice acting and a radical visual explosion of 360 video to create an audio and visual experience, allowing those who are hard of hearing and those with visual impairment to both experience a rich alternate digital landscape.

360 Video view of Chamber404, the webVR experience of the social media world when audiences are interacting with various online identities

‘Online Indentity’ Avatar character in VR experience speaking directly to audiences

Chamber404 developed unique visual script in style of Social Media posts whilst working with writer

Developing a visual response: posts derived from social media platforms into conversational play script with writer Zoe Bullock.

 

Chamber404 Thesis Film

Chamber404 explores disorientation in the process of self-identity construction through pressure to perform, social obligations, the dissolving of work and life privacy online and display of sexuality. The audience meets the AVATAR in her own bedroom to discover the USER’s ‘life story’ and online identity together. Is the AVATAR’s belief principally good for the USER?

 

Rehearsal in physical space to capture actors’ performance for the VR experience

Combining physical space rehearsals with virtual Visual developments using VR sculpture tool