Symbiosis @SXSW 2023

Symbiosis was a compelling and intriguing experience at the XR Experience Competition at SXSW 2023. Attendees were watching and signing up to participate in this stunning virtual reality. Directors Marcel Van Brakel and Mark Meeuwenoord immerse you in a multisensory experience bringing you 200 years into the future. That is a post-human world due to climate change.

It’s a future where new artificial and enhanced biochemical life connects. Through symbiosis, they are sharing their habitat, information and resources. It’s a complex world where technology and life become one but leave the user with much to discuss.

Symbiosis is a performative, multiuser, multisensory VR installation that redesigns the human body. This VR experience allows for the multi-users to co-exist within a performative space. It is a choose-your-character adventure where you are part of a human-animal or human-technology experience. Furthermore, you connect and depend on one another to change the complexity and outcome of the game.

Soft Robots

Each participant gets to wear a soft robotic wearable which will allow manipulations and interactions within the experience. It was interesting to wear these and not have the ability to use your hands and move your arms freely. To reflect this symbiotic relationship, you connect to the other participants with limited movement. Nonetheless, the primary goal is to attain food. Your movements determine if you gain resources while maintaining that symbiotic relationship with the other users in the experience.

Wearing VR headsets and looking into the future was intriguing. Looking at lifeforms that do not exist in today’s world in both real and technological times will stir anyone’s curiosity. What makes Symbiosis unforgettable is the scent installation within the experience. It allows you to determine the scent of a post-human world.

Symbiosis is designed by Polymorf which is a collective group based in the Netherlands. The design collective design multisensory experiences through liminal spaces between art, theatre, design and science. Polymorf creates these experiences that are reflective of our future relationship with technology and even our own relationship with others.

www.symbiosis.show