Fear and Sphere
K.Mee Kim with VR Studio (YURT in Brown University)
Material - Oculus rift, YURT Studio
Concept - Human emotions through VR.
The setup was a virtual reality environment with speaker installed that produced *infrasound to the VR user.
(*Infrasound : Sound below 20 Hz, lower than humans can perceive.)


Within the VR space, there were rows of white spheres that covered this space in a cylinder shape. The shape caused illusion of holes on the top and bottom end of the space, which caused difficulty of focus for the user. On top of that, the spheres were aligned in such way that at first glance, they are perfectly aligned but there actually were small disharmony in the alignment, which worked as a main element to convey an environment seemingly perfect but not truly. This was something I personally felt strongly about in connection to OCD that was placed into the work. During testing, many felt uncomfortable and uneasy with the VR space and some responded to the infrasound. It seemed that while my work had an effect, it had too much focus on my perceptual aspect of OCD to be fully comprehended by the audience.
The VR space was redesigned to be perfect with all spheres truly aligning into a perfect, airtight shape. And the spheres spun rapidly in a direction while the space contracted instead to create the uncomfortable and uneasy environment. As I believe that this adaption suits average users more, I expect more people to have felt the emotion and tension I wanted to bring. Still, there could be a lot more improvements made, especially with the infrasound.
Through this work and experience, I ultimately want more artists to convey their sufferings through art. The pain, the enduring, the feeling of grief, sadness, and everything that the society pressures many to keep to themselves that I attempt to illustrate through my work, I would like to see many more artists doing the same. I believe in this because I know that art is the best medium for me to express myself. But not only the positive and hopeful, but also sad and disillusioned. Because in the end, only artistically expressing positivity is a lie. On the other hand, expressing ourselves, the good and the bad, without barrier is a powerful tool that could connect us to our audience more. To show the audience what you feel and connect with their difficulties and misery
- that is beauty only art could achieve. And there should be more of it.