Transformation of Things

Transformation of Things
2021
Virtual Reality, Unity, 3D Animation, Color, Silent, 5’00”

The “Transformation of Things” originates from Zhuangzi’s writings : the chapter « Qi Wu Lun » attempts to point out the dynamic relationship between Subject and Object, reality and illusion, a relationship as much opposed as united. This reveals how the world perceived by a Subject is not the one and only truth of reality. Perceptions at times, do possess the ability to help transcend borders between one’s own body and that of the world, they do hold the possibility of transforming oneself into an Object. As written at the end of the same text: “In this moment, did I dream of Zhuang Zhou changed into a butterfly? Or did I dream of butterfly changed into Zhuang Zhou?”

In virtual reality, the body is made to be connected to the inside of a virtual space. In that moment, perceptions gathered inside virtual reality will shape how the body senses its own presence. This part suspends the body situated in physical reality, it creates in it a vacancy; in turn, the sense of embodiment induced in virtual reality also shakes the idea of how the human body is as independent as indivisible. This means, the body no longer is purely physical, but re-deployed into the world after and through the experience of simulation. Under these circumstances, the Subject restructures the limits of its own body through its virtual body, resulting in the Subject overspilling the border, crossing towards the virtual, and the virtual too, crossing over towards the Subject.

With virtual reality installations, “Transformation of Things” sets up a special system of observation. What the artwork attempts to express is not about the gradual immersion of a viewer’s perception, nor it is about the body’s presence. It is, through means of controlling the Subject’s viewing position, about how we can reach situations in which the notion of presence is in continual transformation, to then call forth the “Transformation of Things”, this process experienced by the Subject inside virtual space. The Viewer begins as an observer outside the virtual object, then throughout an ongoing immersion inside the object, it goes on to observe the inner structure of the virtual item. At that moment, the Viewer-Subject belongs, on one hand, to the outside, as an observer examining the Object; and on the other hand, because of how perceptions produce presence as, it also exists as an intrinsic part of the Object. Conversely speaking, the virtual entity constituting the Object, continuously unfolds the inner part of its materiality to the observer; so that, when crossed by the observer, its interior inverts into its exterior, and becomes for the observer a space to exist in. In this system of observation, “subject/object”, “observer/observed”, “self/butterfly”, respectively come to point at their pair’s presence conditions,
i.e. : “I am at once present inside and outside of the butterfly, the butterfly is at once present inside and outside of me.” Under these circumstances, the Subject no longer exists inside virtual space in the form of another subject: for it was transformed and altered by a state of fundamental metamorphosis , it rather approaches virtual entity itself. Following how the Subject’s position keeps on delving inside the Object, it eventually passes from the outside in, through the material structure of the virtual object: texture, polygon mesh, armature, coordinates. Ultimately, the Subject exhausts the virtual entity, the very visibility of its external materiality, and dives into the innermost part of it. Inside this space, materiality of the virtual entity is revoked, and by seeing the invisible Object, the Subject then faces the essence of the virtual.

Credit:
3D Animation | Dinoraisin
Interactive Program Designer | Lin-Hung
Photographer | Chu Chi-Hung