BELONGINGS

Every day, across the world, survivors are left with the possessions of a loved one who has passed away, a lifetime of objects holding their stories. After my mother’s death, I found photographs and documents that revealed a past she had kept secret my whole life. I thought I knew her. Learning a few facts left only more questions that could never be answered. Ellen’s story began in Germany in 1927. At 12, she was expelled from her home by the Nazis and sent to an internment camp along with her beloved mother and grandmother. Somehow, she was able to emigrate to the United States. The details of her journey are vague, only what can be deduced from the documents saved by her uncle. The story progresses in real time by way of interaction with Ellen’s artifacts inside a changing world of color and music. It is up to the viewer which items to pick up and listen to. In BELONGINGS, as in life, the participant chooses their own actions but they cannot control the passage of time. A whole person is discovered from bits and pieces, little details, out of order. It is as true a history as anyone will ever know. The Aesthetic: As I designed Belongings, the audience I kept in mind was people new to the medium of VR. Simple walking around the virtual space as the mode of locomotion and using only the controller trigger for interactions are meant to make the piece easy to experience. The cube primitives that tell the story represent not only the objects pictured on them, but the memories associated with these objects. The rolling pin is not only a rolling pin. It is a specific rolling pin at a specific point in the life of the protagonist. Each cube is a box symbolically holding a memory. I have shown the piece to viewers without knowledge of industry conventions. They accept the aesthetic as presented, intrinsically understanding it for the metaphor it is. Those in the industry tend to see the cubes as placeholders for 3D models, which they are not.