Fetal Fixation (2022)

(Documentation in progress)

Class: Objects of Play, Spring 2022

In this immersive installation, two users bridge the gap between physical and virtual space and put their communication to the test by co-creating a world in virtual reality.

The installation is comprised of two creation stations. One is an empty room in VR. User 1 puts on the headset and enters the space. Pressing the trigger on the controllers, they can spawn wooden blocks from their hands. The other station is under a real desk. This cubby space is decorated with pillows and blankets, and out in front lies a large pad of paper and children’s creative materials (crayons, markers, sticky notes, scissors, etc). User 2 must crouch into the small space (somewhat of a “fetal” experience) in order to start expressing themselves on the paper.

Attached to the top of the desk is a camera, which is live streaming a bird’s eye view of User 2’s creations into User 1’s VR experience. Specifically, the pad of real paper is the floor of the VR room. In this way, User 2 becomes a map-maker, attempting to guide User 1’s actions in VR with their creative expression. User 1 can respond with creative expression (the blocks), but User 2 cannot see how the 3D space is evolving. User 1 must speak if they want to communicate a creative suggestion or achieve an orderly experience of their 3D virtual world. Alternatively, User 1 can choose to disobey the mappings of User 2. However, User 1 is stuck in the virtual reality one way or another, so it works to their advantage to cooperate or else they facilitate their own misery.

These interactions represent a utopian consequence of the toxic communication that occurs between a child and their parent who is emotionally immature or abusive. Typically when this happens, the child learns to parent their parent instead: they do everything in their power to curate a positive experience for their parent in order to prevent harmful behavior. While in reality this fabrication of a world void of triggers would condition the child to suppress their own feelings and gain responsibility without respect, in this installation, User 2 (the child)’s responsibility leads to true power, as User 1 (the parent) is trapped by the limits of their communication and must respect User 2 in order to have proof of their social existence.