Fight and No Flight
Skills/Software: Unity VR, Oculus Quest 2
Fight and No Flight is a VR experience that lands players in a seemingly normal bedroom. Through interaction with the objects in the space, players come to realize the invisible allergens and health hazards that inhabit their safe space. The experience combines dry and ironic humorous text, triggering sounds, and reimagined medication label videos. Along with the slightly dizzying experience of using a VR headset, the player feels slightly unwell and is almost repulsed by the physical and visual stimuli.
The obvious thing to do when dealing with environmental allergies is to prevent yourself from being exposed to allergens, potentially by staying in the comforts of your bedroom, and cleaning. However, dust accumulates and external allergens are still brought in through clothes that have been worn outside. Vacuuming is one of the easiest ways to clean, yet it isn’t recommended for people who suffer from allergies because the force of the vacuum stirs up dust and allergens into the air, triggering allergy attacks. Not only that, but necessity forces everyone to go outside - work, school, grocery shopping, exercise. There is truly no safe space.
Process
The idea began with a sterile all-white room with the videos projected on a wall and a narrative story on another wall, but I felt that this was not immersive enough; the viewer was a passive observer instead of an active explorer. I then pivoted to displaying facts and statistics about furniture and objects that tend to collect allergens unfit, yet decided that the viewer was still passively intaking information. I finally settled on using dry humor to provoke the viewer into thinking about the meaning of the text.