_Plastisapiens

Plastisapiens is an interactive virtual reality experience that asks participants to explore a future where organic and plastic beings become one. Users are invited to take a break from eco-anxiety and jarring news headlines to instead enter a calming animated space. Here, they can travel back in time to witness the origins of organic and plastic life; explore their kinship with bacteria, viruses and fungi; and watch in amazement as their (virtual) hands turn into waving tentacles, and then as those tentacles turn into new mutant appendages—a symbol of an imagined future where skin and synthetics have co-evolved, and survival of the fittest means embracing flexibility in body and mind. Throughout the 15-minute interaction, users shift from observer to participant, and the experience is a journey from a place of reactivity and fear to a curious, even hopeful future mindset. A better place for thoughtful conversation and meaningful action around the pressing global issue of petrochemical pollutions. Co-creator Miri Chekhanovich also serves as a narrator and gentle guide, for both the French and English versions, while Israeli composer Ori Alboher (a.k.a. ORI) provides a suitably soothing ambient soundtrack, using his voice to embody the joint relationship between plastic and organic. The experience is also available as a multi-sensory installation, created by textile and bioplastic artists, for select events. In this version, several participants can take part at once, entering an enveloping cocoon where transparent materials help humans and the environment melt into one another. Inspired by organic forms and human biology, stalagmites can be found above and petroleum-like bioplastic “puddles” below, where life begins to grow in the form of (plastic) flowers. While seated, everybody is offered a piece of edible bioplastic—a hint at themes of porosity and hybrid bodies, and a further blurring of boundaries between participants and the space around them. Plastisapiens was created for Quest 2 headsets and was conceived with a real-time rendering engine. It can be experienced seated or standing, with controllers or hand-tracking.