In this Peabody Award winning, emotionally-charged experience, you are seated in the back seat of a photo-realistic 1986 Cadillac, behind Ed and Mary-Helen, Sebastian’s parents, as they take a journey down a country road in rural Missouri.
Get to know Sebastian through the drama unfolding in intimate proximity in the front seat as well as by interacting with a collection of Sebastian’s personal belongings including his diary. Was he a “disgrace” like his father says or a “good man” as his mother believes?
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The virtual reality experience is anchored in a physical, interactive, immersive installation in which we recreate a domestic space—Sebastian’s childhood home—populated with historically accurate, crowd-sourced, and curated objects. We encourage visitors to explore this space before or after experiencing virtual reality.
The visitor is positioned in the back seat of a car within intimate proximity of Depthkit rendered volumetric characters: Mary-Helen, Sebastian’s mother, in the front passenger seat and Ed, Sebastian’s father, who drives. Surrounded by an oppressive silence, but unobserved, the visitor has the opportunity to focus on dialogue and the body language of the two characters. 3D scanned objects appear in the box next to the visitor on the car seat. The story is revealed through the visitor’s interaction with the objects.
Through art, love, technology, and storytelling we can create novel forms of connection and new ways of sharing. For Queerskins, this possibility rests upon a basic truth: although every person’s story is unique, the experience of love and loss is universally and quintessentially human.
We asked visitors who came to experience Queerskins: a love story to share their own stories of love and loss. Here are their stories.
See stories now →
Illya Szilak is an independent scholar, writer and new media artist. In her art practice, she uses open source media and collaborations forged via the Internet to create multimedia narrative installations online.
Shaped by her experience as a physician, her artistic practice explores mortality, embodiment, identity, and belief in a media inundated by an increasingly virtual world.
Cyril Tsiboulski is co-founder and creative director at Cloudred, a digital design practice that is both an independent content-producing creative studio and a service-based agency with global clientele across corporate, government, civic and cultural domains. He is also a faculty member at New York University where he teaches in the Digital Communications and Media Program.
Choreographer Brandon Powers creates seamless visceral experiences at the intersection of theatre, dance, and technology. The form of these experiences are determined and constructed by fusing techniques from by background in immersive theatre, musical theatre, and Modern dance. Brandon is committed to investigating technology’s effect on our culture, minds and private experiences by creating experiences which embrace technology’s role in our lives as a connector and community building tool.
Executive Producers Illya Szilak T-Mo Bauer
Associate Producers Christopher E. Vroom Dr. Yael Halaas
Producer Kathleen Fox
Director of Photography Cory Allen
Assistant Camera Tony Bartalini
360 Video Richard Hammer
Sound Mixer Laura Cunningham
Choreographer Dawn Saito
Post-Producer Anu Nagaraj
Depthkit Operator Supreet Mahanti
Depthkit Post Production Jillian Morrow
Depthkit Consultants Kyle Kukshtel Alexander Porter
3D Artist Pat Goodwin
Unity Lighting Design Pat Goodwin Dale Henry
Interactive Development Chronosapien Interactive
Color & Finish theColourSpace
Colorist & Finishing Artist Juan Salvo
VFX Compositor Uroš Perišić
Post production sound services provided by Skywalker Sound, a Lucasfilm Ltd. Company, Marin County, California
Sound Designer Jeremy Bowker
Sound Lead Kevin Bolen
Dialog Editors Elizabeth Marston Danielle Dupre
VR Audio Intern Jonathan Do
Set Designers Nate Frieswyk D. Schuyler Burks (The Dad Shop)
Haptics Design Allen Yee
Graphic Design Willy Wong
Spanish Subtitles Erika Sierra Alvaro Sierra, Jr.
Special Thanks Zeina Abi Assy, Opeyemi Olukemi, Tom Krueger, Alexander Porter and Kyle Kukshtel, Ebony Peay Ramirez (Oculus Launchpad), Heather Lee MacFarlane and Jacqueline Bosnjak (Q Department), Oscar Raby and Katy Morrison (VRTOV Studio), Alex Colgan and Angela Bermudo (LeapMotion), all of our generous Kickstarter supporters, the people of Missouri.
Flickr photographs Set 1 — Randy’s Donuts: Constanza Dagardo; LA sky: Mark UNSL; White T-shirt: Jessie Hart Set 2 — Mali: upyernoz; LA: Matt K.; Hollywood sign: Luca Sartoni; Tent: Martjin Munneke Set 3 — Abstract: T-Mo Bauer; Amusement park: Russell Davies; Africa clinic: Amy the Nurse; Ende Village: upyernoz; LA pool: Chris Dobbins
