A Fragile World
A 360° room experience that immerses viewers in a macroscopic world of intricately cut paper, inviting contemplation on the fragility and ephemerality of life.
The Idea:
We want to develop Grains of Recollection, which was originally conceived as a VR experience, into an immersive 360° room that surrounds audiences in an exquisitely crafted and fragile world made of paper.
The original VR version (see video below) was inspired by a model maker with Alzheimer’s who preserves her fading memories by recreating her life’s places in paper but we want to open up the narrative to become a contemplation on the fragility of life and the ephemeral nature of time.
The projections will be crafted from our existing 3D world in Unreal Engine, immersing viewers in a delicate yet evocative landscape—where towering paper trees, fluttering butterflies, and a paper cabin unfold around them. As day fades into night, shifting light transforms the paper world, taking its fragility and dreamlike beauty into darkness. The visuals will be accompanied by a specifically commissioned piece of music and a voice.
The Backstory:
We are well known for our contemplative narratives and our animated paper craft worlds in which we combine physical, intricately crafted models with digital projection technologies in order to tell stories.
Our audiences often mused that they would like to live in our papery miniature worlds, and with our venturing into XR technologies we thought that virtual reality might be a way to grant our audiences that wish.
In autumn 2021 and through R&D funding from XR Stories we were able to experiment with methodologies that transpose the aesthetics and imperfections of our real life paper craft worlds into a digital reality in Unreal Engine.
The asset creation for the virtual paper world was modelled on the look and crafting principles of a physical paper maquette. (See below for pictures of the real world paper craft compared to the digital versions.)
As part of the 360 experience we would like to consider displaying some of the physical paper models so audiences can appreciate the difference in scale and their perspective as being inside a paper world versus towering above a paper world.
