Singularity

Richardson, G+VERL and Shen were funded by BBC, Arts Council England and Screen South to create and produce ‘Singularity’: an immersive VR Experience. The work will be available to the public via a new BBC VR platform and will premiere on ‘BBC Arts Introducing’ strand in May 2020. Presented in the form of a VR interactive game on Oculus Quest, ‘Singularity’ extrapolates a model of accelerated fatal technological advance, defined by Virillio as Dromology (discussed with Armitage in CTHEORY.Net 2000). The ‘game’ provides the first working model which illustrates and interrogates the concept of Singularity. Using thruster based virtual controls the ‘player’ navigates through a night-time forest scene. Treated to allow the projection of moving surface data points onto branches, trunks and leaves the environment is at once fluid and radiant. Using their gaze the player collects incongruous artefacts hidden throughout the scene. The artefacts are represented as 3D meshes and rendered in a Fresnel shader giving a holographic look. Once collected objects levitate and fracture into point clouds disappearing from view. When three objects are collected the game accelerates. An AI takes control of play, gaze, gesture and collection are sped up to the point of unplayability. With no option to go back the game world disintegrates into a disorientating system of point clouds. The participant reaches ‘pass-through’ a feature of the headset which combines VR with AR allowing the participant to see both game and their immediate environment.