Contextual Essay:
In our project, I took on the role of a storyteller. I was responsible for developing the project’s narrative structure. My task was to create an emotional structure of the journey, the text that was meant to help people immerse themselves more deeply in the experience and fully go through the range of emotions, from negative, such as anger and sadness, to the final state of peace, calm, and emotional release. I wanted the viewers not simply to observe the projections, but to feel involved in the process.
The experience begins by asking the participant to recall the last strongest negative emotion that he has felt recently. Depending on his answer, it will be clear which path the story will take. The main purpose of the experience is to help participants relive this emotion in a safe and guided way. The experience will be guided by a voice-over performed by my teammate, who reads from a script I prepared, and it will be background music for better immersion.
To better understand and organize the narrative, I created a visual novel in Arcweave. This helped me to map out the branching paths and helped me to understand how the emotions should be connected to each other to create an interesting experience, because it is important to visualize the transition between emotional states and projections. In addition, I created a sensory atmosphere of the project. I selected the music that can support the emotional flow of the experience and can help the participant feel and immerse the atmosphere more deeply. I also generated the images to show the project coordinator and the technical specialist how I imaged the projections. Based on the generated pictures, they created a final installation. Later, I created two scripts for concept creator, so she could read text in a way that was comfortable for her. Overall, Arcweave helped me to turn our abstract idea into a structured interactive narrative and helped to connect visuals with the project’s conceptual meaning.
The main inspirations for our team, and for me personally, were teamLab and AYA Universe. I loved how sound and light created an environment where you just forget everything else. I wanted to recreate that same feeling in our project. At the same time, we decided to use text as one of the main elements to give the experience greater meaning. We wanted people to work through their emotions and reach a state of inner peace and a deeper connection with themselves. So I created a text that will guide the participant and will feel poetic and subtle.
However, the creative process included several important changes. In the beginning, I had to replace my original idea and the draft in Arcweave because it turned out to be impossible to realize technically. Then, the structure changed several times. First, from two paths to three, later back to two again, the paths became longer and more developed.
This project taught me that a narrative can make the experience more engaging and powerful, even when it may seem unnecessary at first.
Interactive experience videos:
Horrorewind 