Freya Emerson

The project film paints a picture of what a future digital reality might look like through the design of a series of augmented everyday spaces that reflect the nuances of Her character grappling with this strange new world. Through Her gradual absorption into this virtual world and the spaces it comprises, the project aims to question; what does the individual have to gain or lose from the metaverse? How do we design these in tandem with the real? and will the designer have more or less control over the spaces we physically or virtually inhabit?

The experience of a portrait, especially one depicting only the face head and shoulders, was one of the earliest methods of ‘painting’ a version of reality to be experienced at one remove. However, the photograph can actually put to death the object by fixing it firmly in a particular moment. During the Victorian era, there was a brief trend in photographing the corpse in either a sitting or lying position, sometimes with family, sometimes alone. These photographs freed the object/person from time, but imprisoned them in eternal death. While macabre in circumstance, the photograph itself has the power to represent more specifically than any memory could. The rise in digital robotics and avatar design allows us not only to represent a version of ourselves through new media, but goes further than the portrait to free our body from time allowing a simulation of ourselves to live on and continue to interact with other simulated bodies after our death.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Her Living Room introduces the concept of the simulation. In an integrated digital reality, are we in control of the simulation beneath the floorboards or is it controlling us?

With the emergence of each new medium intent on influencing our reality, the effects have been explored through the category of the uncanny, otherwise known as the unease we feel when we see something that looks almost real. Unlike the category of horror, sites most susceptible to uncanny disturbance are that of the familiar mundane that in some way convey a disturbing chasm of unreality. The house has been considered as as the origin site for uncanny disturbance and has used by directors, photographers and artists such as Stanley Kubric, David Lynch and Gregory Crewdson who through film or photography, paint mundane or banal sites that are subjected to something more unnatural.

The corner shop exists as a physical typology with pre-existing links to consumerism, individuality and social diversity which present themselves as contenders of dispute within design of Facebook’s metaverse. Our local corner shop doesn’t exist as a fantasy, it is a place described as an everyday contact zone where all age groups from various backgrounds venture for a pint of milk and a packet of cigs. These encounters are no less significant for their ordinariness, rather they are places in the real world where the everyday and the extraordinary converge in seemingly banal ways. So what happens when the corner shop, which is neutrally designed to serve all purposes and people, is virtually designed to solely represent, reflect and serve one user? Will it be possible to activate personalised, virtual experiences through interacting with real, physical objects and will our immersion within this new virtual medium, which allows us to directly manipulate or take control of our surroundings lead us to a point where we become totally absorbed by a world of our own making.

What does Her corner shop look like in the metaverse, a space she knows not to be real but absorbs Her completely. Throughout its various iterations, the space of the corner shop has taken inspiration from German expressionist cinema of the 1920s, alongside modern surrealist directors to recreate a space that represents Her mental and emotional states. While the spaces delve deeper and deeper into her psyche, they begin to reflect back not only her needs and desires, but also her fears and emotions. While this project is a response to the metaverse, which implies user control, Her film is solely controlled by the spaces within. Asking the viewer to question their own relationship to a world which absorbs them, but where they have no control.

The simulation of a physical presence within this environment means we have entered into a new form of Being. Here we consider a wholly new form of ‘uncanniness’ where we are able to exist in two places at once. While our physical body continues to exist in the real, physical world, we are also embodied within the virtual by means of technology that translates our bodies actions into interactions with the virtual environment. Sensors can be placed on the limbs, so that the movement of one’s real limb triggers the movement of one’s virtual limbs. In expanding the importance of the body, Virtual reality also caused us to rethink the question of what it means to Be in the world, and how having bodies affects that Being.

Once we find ourselves in mind and body immersed within this new realm, What this virtual reality demand of us, in terms of experience, is inherently architectural. There is no physicality within the virtual landscape yet we still live in a physical world and design the unreal in a physical way through what we know to be real, through gravity, through context, through directional and sensory orientation. What can be considered as ‘real’ is how you orient yourself within a world. Like the painting, the photograph or the film, immersive reality is not so much a new reality but a new medium in which to portray our existing spatial reality. The constructed orientation of this world gives the user a sense of direction. In the same way, the psychological impact or sense of uncanniness within this sphere is observed when we lose our orientation, notice a collapse in the status quo of what was previously defined or glimpse the operational system which serves this construct.

Often when physical architecture is created, it exists in the context of a city that is controlled by certain laws. In the virtual environment, the whole thing is turned on its head, and the logic of how the thing you create connects to everything around it is completely different. Undoubtedly the photograph and the film have the power to create an imprint of time, whereas in the virtual, environments are created in places where the timeframe is a lot shorter and changing more rapidly. Experiences of the virtual have the potential to be as meaningful as experiences in the physical and design of this world therefore need to follow similar guidelines or principles to the design of the real. While the promise of the extraordinary is great, the way we move through these virtual environments must provide reliable and dependable spaces of access which do not change with every update. The mundane and familiar prevent the feeling of getting lost and provide a degree of stability and certainty which we require in order to continue building these new worlds.