6 Hours
Web-based VR installation
Presented at ICMC 2021
Created by Mengtai Zhang and Lemon Guo
“Isolation Therapy” adapts Mozilla Hubs, a social platform for web-based virtual reality, as an environment for continuous site-specific sound installation to simulate an experience of forced isolation. Exploring interactive forms of musical composition, the work appropriates audio spatialization algorithms to create multiple hyper-localized sound fields throughout the space. These sound fields contain audio loops of varying lengths, which can only be heard in close proximity and appear to interweave in a nonlinear timeline. Thus, each audience member will compose their own listening experience as they navigate the confined space.
Upon entering the work, the audience will find themselves in the unlit corner of a small dilapidated room, surrounded by an ocean-like soundscape. They are free to explore the room, but unable to exit through the closed door. Visually, the room appears to have an uncanny mixture of tactile details that simulate the real world (e.g., the crumbling paint and chalk drawings on the walls) and bizarre features that signal the virtual space (e.g., the florescent light and pieces of paper floating in mid-air). Aurally, as one moves around the room, they will experience a rapidly shifting soundscape with extreme localization that defy the laws of the physical world. There are sounds that evoke strong physical sensations, such as beating sine tones and wall-scratching sounds, as well as disembodied voices carrying reverbs of enormous spaces, which contradict the appearance of this small room.
The multitude of contradictions in this virtual confinement creates a sense of tension, serving as a metaphor for the paradox of autonomy on the internet. Morita Therapy, a type of psychotherapy after which this installation is modeled, “treats” patients by locking them up in a small room with little human contact for up to months at a time. It has been practiced at one of the largest internet addiction treatment centers in China since 2008, which targets not only people’s online gaming habits, but also depression, teenage dating, homosexuality, amongst other qualities that could be deemed undesirable to desperate parents. Using the contested diagnosis and treatment of internet addiction as a mirror, “Isolation Therapy” reflects growing forms of social control such as censorship in the increasingly institutionalized cyberspace.