Ambient Divergence

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Finalist at NEWVIEW Awards 2021

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Project Description: The pandemic forced a great withdrawal for many of us within our homes, computers, and interior worlds. This collective shift in behavior and worldview brought plenty of fear, suffering, and confusion, but it also inspired an exponential rise in curiosity about new ways of communicating within these limitations.

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While technology has made information and remote connection more accessible than ever, it also has disrupted the notion of universal truths and amplified rifts in cultural identity. Technologies invented with the vision of connecting communities often end up creating echo chambers amongst people, causing further misunderstanding and divisions as people lose their way in a clashing sea of truths and misinformation.

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How can we re-orient ourselves in this confusing world we've created, a world with no unified belief? Our project offers a glimpse of an answer to this question by allowing you to experience “radical otherness” through first-person possession of other people in our virtual world. It causes one to pause and reflect on innovative possibilities of cultivating more normative perceptions in abnormal times.

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To create this work, we collaborated on iterations of scenes in the Unity game engine with the Styly plugin, Shuriken particle system, Playmaker plugin, Mixamo animations, Sketchfab 3D model platform, Github version control, and microphones from friends around the world (for recording ambient audio).