_SHADOWTIME

This VR essay guides you from Ivan Sutherland’s historical creation of the first head-mounted VR display through different iterations of simulation theory in a powerful, embodied critique of virtual realities as a possible solution to current emergency conditions.

‘Shadowtime’ is a new word coined for our age by Ranu Mukherjee and the Bureau of Linguistical Reality, describing the feeling of occupying two irreconcilable times simultaneously. It is being stuck in a traffic jam on your way to work and realizing that the gas in your engine is the compressed mass of prehistoric creatures. It is scrolling through your phone and remembering that the earth is changing irrevocably. In ‘Shadowtime’, directors Sister Sylvester and Deniz Tortum take these temporal incompatibilities and explore them in the realm of virtual reality and simulation theory.

“You are in two worlds at the same time. Your body is in the other world, but your heart is in this one.”
To exist in the virtual world is to have two bodies, four hands, two hearts. Alma, a mysterious guide to this double world, leads you through questions around the climate crisis, irreconcilable realities, and the virtual as a place to take shelter. The VR begins its exploration with the first-ever virtual object: a digital cube. By moving the cube you can make all sorts of locations appear. They look realistic but are actually an additional, disorienting AI-generated factor. Another level of disorientation arises from the fact that it briefly seems like you are using the very first VR headset—a different one than the headset you are actually wearing.

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

The team produced IA 360 videos representing some architectural environnement.

There is also (we think) the first of its kind interactive volumetric recording. The person that appears is a volumetric recording done by depthkit, however the head of the person is reactive to you and never breaking the eye contact.