Misha's Blog

The Virtual Reality of the Desert

Posted in Installations, Projects, Research by Misha on May 20, 2015

Pink Noise Hunt VR by Misha Rabinovich & Caitlin Foley

I spent two weeks camping in Andrea Zittel’s A-Z West Wagon Station Encampment in Joshua Tree. My partner Caitlin Foley followed that up by creating a Shellphone Listening Lounge at the High Desert Test Sites Headquarters in the Sky Village Swap Meet. It was an opportunity to try out some Virtual Reality experiments with the good old Google Cardboard VR headset. It was a fun process that included many first-time VR experiences by the participants.

The Shellphones and several other projects we’ve created explore pink noise which is a special energy pattern ubiquitous in systems on earth. We refer to pink noise as the golden ratio of sound. This VR game is based on the Google Cardboard Treasure Hunt example but with pink noise added in order to get people to listen to it without any visual distractions. To make the game more attractive we flocked the headset with pink flocking, which is something we first did at the Pink Noise Salon at the Flux Factory last summer.

People seemed to have enjoyed playing the game. Someone even said that the Cardboard headset was not nauseating like the Oculus Rift. Perhaps it is because it is a tad less immersive due to a smaller range of vision?

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