The VR Tool seemed the right choice to investigate the doubtful reality from Magritte’s perspective. The first step was to discover his philosophy and select key concepts that could be represented in VR. The topics of “questioning reality” and “decontextualization of ordinary things” were chosen as the best fit for this experience.
The entire experience is divided into 5 main steps. Each one of them represents a key concept of Magritte thought, where the user is invited to immerse and interact with the surrounding environment. The user’s objective is to find the right hint to unlock the next step of the experience.
The main used software was Unity (with a good amount of tutorial), completed with the XR Interaction toolkit, in order to make it compatible with an Oculus Quest 2. 3D scenes and modeling had to be optimized to deal with the limited computational power of the Mobile headset
Oculus Quest controllers give access to a set of familiar interactions. By pushing their buttons, the user will be able to transport himself inside the ambient and grab objects. But the most interesting part was to involve metaphors to ideate new meaningful interactions, like the “Light Brush”: the user can use a light-emitting brush to light up his dark path, as a symbol of Magritte’s instrument of exploration of his mind and unconscious.
The user is guided through the experience by two main recurrent elements: The Narrating Voices enabled by 360 audio tool in Unity 3D and a voice-actor, the user receive an explanation of what he’s seeing. Sketches Hints are sheets of paper that the user will find along the way to let the user understand what he has to do.
The attitude of Magritte of bringing what is basic and familiar to an unusual level of uncertainty evokes very powerful emotional states, like suspence and anxiety. This is what we tried to recreate in this experience: a desperate research for a meaning behind Magritte’s works, until you’ll discover... that mistery is the real magic behind our reality.
