- The Museum -

Hybrid 2 was a module that required us to combine the physical and virtual world. It also challenged us to use the human senses to create an experience for the player, while taking advantage of how newer technology, such as VR, could be used to enhance or influence the  experience.

My role in this project was to organize the route through the museum and figuring out how the final sequence for the central painting would work, as well as working with the developers on the main challenge of translating a room into a digital space. I also took on the responsibility of creating the audio that would play throughout the tour.

The original concept for our immersive VR museum experience involved guiding the player through different kinds of exhibits to try and evoke a sense of dissociation. Over time, we changed this into a more streamlined experience set entirely within a virtual museum. We used one of the school's largest rooms as our physical setting allowing players to walk freely through the space while wearing a VR set, which overcame the natural limitation VR has when it comes to movemnent options. I found that teleportation and stick movement felt a little unimmersive, so this approach served as a good way to merge the physical and digital spaces while sidestepping that issue, especially since immersion was such an important part of our assigment. The route through the museum was intentionally designed with a museum-like audio tour adding context to the exhibits, which also allowed us to manage the player's time so they would make it through the whole thing in a reasonable time.

We had made plans to incorporate various sensory elements, like a fan to simulate wind for a car based exhibit or a mist-spray to mimic humidity, but due to time constraints and a last-minute change of location, we had to settle for less. In the end, the only sensory experience we managed to include was scent: at a bathroom-themed painting, someone held toothpaste under the player's nose to simulate the smell people most associate with their morning/night routine.

Audio played an important role both in how the player navigated the exhibits and the overal mood of the experience. I added in an audio tour, like those found in museums, to guide the player along the route. One of the group members wrote short texts for each painting, which I then converted to audio using a robotic, dissonant text-to-speech voice. This not only helped us control the pacing of the experience, but also added to the eerie atmosphere, enhancing the effect of the strange lighting and surreal paintings. To further support the theme of dissociation, I focused on muffling the party sounds from the central painting, a subtle audio trick that contributed to the unsettling, disconnected feeling we were aiming for.