Poeceptible VR

 Poeceptible

Revisiting an Ancient Chinese Poem in VR with Multiple Senses & Scales

“Poeceptible” is a type of VR calligraphic poetry that revisits Chinese ancient poetry in a contemporary medium.
It enables a global audience, and even a new generation of Chinese, to rediscover the intrinsic modernism in Chinese ancient poetry.
In VR, Viewers will travel through an evolving 3D landscape of calligraphic characters accompanied by the poem soundtrack,
allowing them to look at, look through, hear and feel the “poem“.
it is not an attempt to translate things. Instead, it seeks to reenact the abstract qualities of a poem rather than concrete meanings.

Independent Work | 2018          Advisor: Prof. Panagiotis Michalatos   Skills:  Design Research, Conception, VR Animation, Sound Design Tools: AnimVR 

The Objective

Synthesizing my research, it can be said that Chinese traditional poetry is a multi-sensorial cross-scale aesthetic experience.
The beauty of Chinese traditional poetry lies not only in its semantic story-telling,
but more importantly, in its sonic pattern, and multi-scale visual element assembly and rendering through calligraphy.
Thus, any translation of Chinese ancient poetry into foreign languages that discards its original sonic and visual forms, is doomed to fail.
So the question becomes,  

The Poem

水调歌头·明月几时有 （宋・苏轼）

明月几时有？把酒问青天。不知天上宫阙，今夕是何年。我欲乘风归去，又恐琼楼玉宇，高处不胜寒。起舞弄清影，何似在人间？
转朱阁，低绮户，照无眠。不应有恨，何事长向别时圆？人有悲欢离合，月有阴晴圆缺，此事古难全。但愿人长久，千里共婵娟。

The poem was written in the Song Dynasty by famous Chinese scholar Su Shi on a moonlit night in memory of his family.

[translation] How rare the moon, so round and clear! With cup in hand, I ask of the blue sky,
"I do not know in the celestial sphere, What name this festive night goes by?"
I want to fly home, riding the air, But fear the ethereal cold up there,
The jade and crystal mansions are so high! Dancing to my shadow, I feel no longer the mortal tie.

She rounds the vermilion tower, stoops to silk-pad doors, shines on those who sleepless lie.
Why does she, bearing us no grudge, shine upon our parting, reunion deny?
But rare is perfect happiness. The moon does wax, the moon does wane.
And so men meet and say goodbye. I only pray our life be long,

The beginning half of the poem was used for the pilot project in an ancient Chinese calligraphic style - Xiao Zhuan.

Original Writing

I did some research and analyzed the ideographic parts of each character in this poem, as a basis for my association.

Concept Sketch

Some initial sketches about character animation and scene transitions.

VR Design

Learning from Chinese traditional paintings, modern visual/ sonic poetry, as well as VR films such as Dear Angelica,
the idea of Poeceptible: VR multi-sensorial calligraphic poetry started to emerge.
I chose VR as the medium for its relationship to the human body and its ability to render multi-scale non-linear visual/audio experiences.
It allows viewers to “walk” through the 3-dimensional visual elements as if they were truly immersed in the poem.
Poeceptible is also a chance for me to defamiliarize with, and re-appreciate the modernity of Chinese traditional arts.

Screenshots

Developing Process

The elements of the poem, “calligraphic characters”, were hand-drawn and animated in VR.
I edited and shot a 360 video accompanying the poem soundtrack using AnimVR.
Viewers can choose to follow the optimal viewing path suggested by the result video to appreciate the poem, or “gang their own gait”.

Future Work

1. Finish: complete the rest of the project (other 3/4 parts)
2. Interaction: use body movement as an input to trigger character deformation, personalizing character styles for individuals.
3. Serialize: what if our ancestors had VR? how would they represent each characters in 3D? produce a series of 3D characters like emojis.

Download: PoeceptibleVR Paper