We have been closely following the global events related to COVID-19 and have quickly learned to come to terms with new social behaviors. Isolation, separation, and social distancing have opened new avenues for remote communication, but have also forced us to seek alternative ways of living together in virtual spaces.
In this workshop, we immersed ourselves together with students into the multiverse of VRChat, a giant social VR platform, to create, host, and co-host public and private events. We transformed our private homes into fabulous virtual public arenas. We explored strange hybrid states, oscillating between the physical and the virtual, as we collectively performed profound architectural rituals like sleeping, eating, and even bathing.

The workshop included extended reality methods to expand our physical boredom and allowed ourselves and our familiar living spaces to interface with the unfamiliar, weird and exotic other of the virtual dimension.
Concentrating on exploring digital interventions in both the physical and the virtual realities, the workshop provided a theoretical and practical overview as well as insights into the idea of the Virtual as Public and Social Space and a stage to perform identity. With this in mind, we experimented with time-based embodied experiences to explore new ways of inhabiting both our bodies and our most-used intimate spaces in new, performative ways, transcending ourselves into pixels and bytes as we allow our virtual friends to inhabit our physical bedrooms, and perhaps even end up hosting dinner parties together.

Image Credits:    Stefan Maier, Cenk Güzelis,
Dominc Schwab, Uwe Brunner.

Supported by