Monitoring Room

“Monitoring Room” specifically intends to address the topic of “Monitoring” here. Before stepping into the actual VR experience, a small-scaled Lego room(model) will be placed at the entrance of the exhibition space for the audience to look inside while waiting in line. The audience will see a small chair at the center of the model, a Lego mini-figure with a VR headset, and a functional webcam. There is no clue for the audience to understand what this Lego model is for at this moment. After putting on the VR headset, the audience will suddenly realize that herself/himself becomes that figure she/he just saw in the Lego model and is “monitored” by the audience waiting in line. Through the setting, she/he can see the waiting audience’s faces through the skylight of the virtual room, just like the giant in the “Jack and the Beanstalk” peeping into the room. A single chair with rain falling directly on it in the virtual room enhances the helplessness/loneliness like staying in an interrogation room (a physical chair will also be provided in the middle of the exhibition room for sitting). The audience waiting in line looking inside the Lego model metaphorically are indicated not only Big Brother (the government, the corporate) who owns the privilege to constantly watch/manipulate people’s private data under surveillance but also personal social media power interfering with everyone’s daily lives.

In the “Monitoring Room”, playing the “scaling” effect between the virtual and physical spaces is the fun way arousing the attention of the current social “monitoring” issue. Besides, this immersive experience will bring the critical inquiry of “what is reality” matching the main theme with this series of VR experiments, the “Void Rooms”. According to the French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, “virtual” is not opposed to “real” but to “actual” which implies the idea of “virtual is real” in my interpretation. In other words, anything that happens in virtual reality should be considered a real experience and that is exactly how VR can expand human senses and what the “Void Rooms” series would like to explore.