With support from the Taiwan Academy in Houston and the Ministry of Culture, Taiwanese artist and filmmaker Huang Hsin-Chien (黃心健)'s latest VR production "Samsāra (輪迴)" will be available at Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University in Houston, from Mar. 1 until Apr. 1.
This VR experience will transport audiences through space and time, blowing your mind with extraordinary visualizations of human existence in an ecstasy of color and form. A virtual narrative by Huang begins in the near future when the Earth's resources have been depleted due to human greed. Fighting for natural resources leads to catastrophic wars and global destruction forcing the remaining population to leave Earth and find a new home.
Will this long quest for a new home be a loop in space and time? Without spiritual evolution, is progress and evolution nothing more than a Möbius strip that leads nowhere? Using the concept of embodied cognition, "Samsāra" uses virtual reality and interactivity to create the experience of transforming one's body into different beings while promoting empathy and a holistic view of our shared existence.
Huang is a Taiwanese creator of new media with a background in art, design, engineering, and electronic gaming. His projects involve large-scale interdisciplinary interaction, performing, mechanical apparatus, algorithmic computations, and video installations. His virtual reality work "Samsāra" (2021) won the Jury Award of the SXSW Virtual Cinema Competition in Austin, Texas, Best VR Story at Cannes XR, and People’s Choice award at the Festival of International Virtual and Augmented Reality Stories.
For more information, please visit the event's website.