Interactive Experience

Everywhere

Am I the only me?  Is this the only reality?  The right one?  Or are there countless truths? 

This interactive installation takes you on a journey about the realness of reality and what, if you trust in Quantum Mechanics or at least Hugh Everetts interpretation of it, all exists.  Right here - right now.

- please scroll to see more -

1 - Casefilm

2 - Stills

3 - Subject

We all sometimes think about the universe like it is displayed in this graph. If not, movies like "The Butterfly Effect", the Netflix experiment "Bandersnatch" or the "Choose your own adventure"-books will lead you to this thought at the very latest. Every choice we make can lead to new possible outcomes, but shuts down alternative routes for good. 

Hugh Everetts Many-World-Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics claims that all endings are not only possible, but reality. This means (painfully simplified), if we take this model and apply it to every littlest particle there is in the shortest time span we can think of, in every moment, uncountable realities are created. 

4 - Transfer

So to narrow down our possibilities, we think of our realities as rooms. Every room has a certain state at one point of time and one point of our universes. 

This leaves a never ending structure. So what if you could explore this structure - and how would this be possible?

5 - Concept

As the green arrow in my last graph already teased, the idea that formed was to let a viewer experience this one room in its various conditions in different universes. As s/he shouldn't be confused, I decided altering the time was off the table. So with time constantly passing, universes should subtly change. 

To acheive this, I was searching for the most unobtrusive method of interaction there is, and what I found was simply: Blinking.

To explain the scenario of the cabin out of nowhere: I was searching for a somehow "hostile-to-life"-scenario, that was likely to not having been touched, but also a good starting point for any conspiracy-related scenario.
I also like the philosophical aspect of it:

In midst of nowhere, the snow builds a clean slate at beginning, everything is white and empty. In the end though, the spectator leaves this experience knowing there is absolutely everything, just one blink away. 

6 - Technical Aspects

The Project was realized in Unreal Engine, while modeling of some parts was done in Autodesk Maya.

I used Faceware for facial recognition and the Glassbox Plugin for Faceware to feed the inputs directly into the Unreal Engine Blueprint System. 

7 - Credits

Concept
Pascal Santaella

Programming
Sebastian Wilhelm
Pascal Santaella

Modeling
[redacted]
Johannes Rapprich
Pascal Santaella

supervising lecturers
Prof. Herbert Moser
Prof. Dr. Holger Lund
Fabian Karrer
Florian Tscharf

There's More: