Journey Into Self
A Meta Quest VR experience on identity and self-reflection.
- Year
- 2023–2024
- Type
- VR · Interactive
- Tools
- Unreal Engine · Meta Quest · Real-time shaders
- Shown
- SIFF XR 2024 Official Selection · AIXR XR Awards Finalist
The viewer walks beside Anne through her life, meeting her at different ages. The piece borrows from cognitive science to take a self apart and put it back together, and leaves the viewer a structure to build their own story in.
The gallery
A spiral gallery of four spherical layers, where time, emotion and belief take visible form. Seven spheres float in it, each a portal to a moment from Anne's life: a beach at dusk, a snowfall forest, a quiet bench. The viewer's choices decide what each one opens onto.
Backstage and the theatre
Behind the gallery, a backstage level of sound-reactive ceiling pieces holds the feelings the memories don't show. The journey ends in a theatre around a pond, where every character met along the way turns out to be part of the same self.
- Role
- VFX artist. Atmospheric and environmental FX, portal and transition effects, reactive shaders, mobile-VR optimization
- Built with
- Unreal Engine · Meta Quest · real-time shaders
- Shown at
- SIFF XR 2024, official selection, Me and Myself, PUSH Art Center, Shanghai
- Runtime
- ~15 min
- Awards
- AIXR XR Awards 2025 finalist, experimental story formats · Graphis Gold Award 2024 for the project poster
- Team
- YYY.MARFA. Director, Chloe Gao · Executive producer and screenwriter, Congyun (Mu Ming) Gu · Interaction and software, Simi · Technical art and sound, Marcel · Visual design, Xindi Xu and Mingxuan Shen · Scene design, Junling
- More
- inmarfa.xyz · AIXR finalists
Gallery
