TUNER

Omid Zarei & Anne Jeppesen / Denmark, United States & France

Inspired by the writings of Philip K. Dick, the visual universe of David Lynch films & the spooky concepts of quantum mechanics — Tuner creates a shapeshifting AR environment that progresses through a series of mini-events. These events adapt to the spectator’s surrounding & physical interaction. Each mini-event has several variations, unfolding deeper layers of the story & they reveal themselves depending on the spectator’s input.

As the experience starts, the story’s base universe is established with animation and sound design, and the participant is put into a waiting state for things to happen. Through this waiting situation the participant experiences a series of sightings which form the spine of the experience: e.g. a metallic bird lands on a furniture and flies away, a cg character passes their sight swiftly vanishing behind a wall, A bizarre plant starts growing on a corner creeping towards a window in their actual room and disappearing etc. In these little events the spectator gets tiny hints that things are happening to which they don’t have full access yet. The bird makes a weird metallic noise. The character body momentarily flashes in a strange color becoming translucent. The plant seemingly turns towards the spectator as if trying to speak but in faint gibberish. Little anomalies that makes them look again.

The mini-events in Tuner are primarily inspired by a private collection of audiotape interviews with people who claim to be UFO abductees, conducted in Iceland during the 2010s. Based on these original stories, We are creating micro experiences for the spectator that if interacted with, can develop and be interpreted as “virtual” close encounters. It’s up to the participant if it wants to stay in the familiar realm— look away and disengage— and let these oddities slide. If that’s the choice then looking again won’t change anything. It’s just a bird, a stranger passerby and a funky plant.

But if they choose to look back, approach, and turn the knob on the virtual Tuner on their wrist, they unlock the unfamiliar: the surroundings and the mini-events continue revealing themselves in new, uncanny forms. There’s more than one layer of these events and they interconnect in different ways than it initially seemed like. It’s the spectator’s level of participation with these glimpses that determine the overall tone of their experience.