THE WORLD OF FREEDOM

 THE WORLD OF FREEDOM 后疫情时代的自由意志

VR EXPERIENCE 虚拟现实影像

Lead Artist: Anna Borou Yu 3D Artist: Jiajian Min Sound Design: Tiange Zhou Tech Scientist:Zeyu Wang Year: 2020

Featured in Ars Electronica .ART Gallery 2020, ACM SIGGRAPH Asia Art Gallery 2020, 2021 Hermes Creative Award Gold Award, KUART Online Exhibition

The World of Freedom is an immersive virtual space, where audiences are provided with the opportunity of empathetically imagining a "free" living sociology at post-pandemic Anthropocene. Audiences are inspired to discuss and reflect on what real freedom is. Nowadays, people are getting more familiar with virtually executed experiences than ever before. The attention of empathy and the new remote working mode evokes the initial idea of this VR experience. By asking how people could learn and think more effectively in this brand new virtual age, and what is the new inter-relationship between individuals and communities, we come up with this co-housing prototype. The futuristic space composition permits a large group of people to experience private/personal rooms and flexible/public areas simultaneously in a strategy of sharing, at the same time holding a hypothetical argument of a social dilemma into a virtual manifestation. The sound experience is specially designed for the various soundscape and the audience's inter-activities. On the one hand, the space prototype is designed as an Utopia. Living in identical personal spaces and supported by innovative technologies, people are encouraged to share information and areas with neighbors, even those with different faith and beliefs. On the other hand, Utopia always bears the danger of falling into Babel. There is no absolute balance of interest even in the virtual world. When the audiences are faced with the choice of “Symbiosis: Yes or No” on a floating billboard, the real outcome appears as either Mutualistic (infiltrated with the neighbor) or Commensalistic (adopted by the public). Though indulged in the concern under the circumstance of asymmetry information, opening up the space in pursuit of co-existence is still the only rational choice for the audiences inlaid in this world.

《后疫情时代的自由意志》构建了一个虚拟现实环境（VR），为观众提供了后疫情时代人类世界对于“自由世界”的想象、反思与批判性讨论。如今，人们对虚拟现实中的体验比以往任何时候都更加熟悉，对于人类命运共同体的同理心和远程工作模式的关注是此作品的初衷。此作品在虚拟现实中构建了一个未来主义的集合住宅共享社区，使得体验者可以在私人领域和公共区域之间穿梭，同时对未来的社会学困境进行思考。一方面，社区原型被设计为乌托邦，人们被鼓励与不同的邻居共享信息和空间。另一方面，乌托邦总有变成巴别塔的危险。即使在虚拟世界中，也没有绝对的利益平衡。当观众的ip在虚拟空间中过载，观众将在浮动广告牌上面临“是否共生”的选择，而实际结果体现为“互惠”（与邻居达成空间共享）或“偏利”（私人领域被公共空间占用）。尽管在信息不对称的情况下做出选择是个艰难的过程，但为追求共存而开放空间仍然是这个虚拟世界中的观众们能做出的唯一理性选择。