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Heterotopias

Heterotopias is an interactive VR experience based on Michel Foucault’s lecture, Des espaces autres. Suspended in a hanging chair, the user progresses through a series of vacant virtual spaces resembling an abbreviated life cycle – a well, a garden, a mausoleum.
The experience leverages eye-tracking technology to transform users’ blinks into cinematic cuts. With every blink, the virtual space alters, producing variable configurations of stereo-360 footage and CG models.

  • Szilvia Ruszev
    Director
  • Noa Kaplan
    Director
  • Kamia Williams
    Producer
  • Brooklyn-Bella
    Key Cast
    "Voice Over 1"
  • Denise Griffin
    Key Cast
    "Voice Over 2"
  • Allie Costa
    Key Cast
  • Shaoyu Su
    Director of Photography
  • Project Type:
    Virtual Reality
  • Genres:
    Essay
  • Runtime:
    6 minutes 20 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    November 30, 2018
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Jaunt VR
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    Yes
Director Biography - Szilvia Ruszev, Noa Kaplan

Noa Kaplan is an artist, researcher, and educator living in Los Angeles, CA. She analyzes and reconstructs overlooked, disappearing, and forgotten collections. Through virtual simulations, physical artifacts, and environments, she invites viewers to inhabit these collections, often at unfamiliar orders of magnitude.

Noa has participated in residencies and fellowships at IDEO, Jaunt, Autodesk, Electric Objects, and Eyeo. She has exhibited recent work at ACME., Rosamund Felsen Gallery, and the Hammer Museum. Her work has also been featured in Business Insider, Wired Magazine, and Discovery VR. Noa earned her BA in Sculpture from Yale University and her MFA in Design Media Arts at UCLA where she developed and taught original studio curricula from 2012 to 2016. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Media Arts + Practice in the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California.

Szilvia Ruszev is media practitioner and scholar focusing on the notion of montage. Her artistic work relates to very personal moments, certain states of emotional solitude in relation to the Other. Her professional work as film editor represents a comprehensive approach to independent filmmaking with more than 30 films to her credit. Her broader research interest focuses on nonverbal forms of knowledge acquisition, montage theories, and politics of post-cinema.
Szilvia, born and raised in Hungary and Bulgaria, studied Film Theory at the Eötvös Loránd University (Hungary) and Film Editing at the Film University Babelsberg (Germany), where she worked as a faculty member for six years. As editor, she collaborated with internationally acclaimed directors such as Peter Greenaway, Anders Østergaard, and János Szász. Her award-winning work has been part of numerous international film festivals and exhibitions such as Karlovy Vary IFF, TIFF Toronto, Berlin IFF. Currently, she is pursuing a Ph. D. degree in Media Arts + Practice at the University of Southern California.

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Director Statement

The primary goal of this VR essay is to establish a sensory version of Foucault’s heterotopology, which he defines as “the study, analysis, description, and ‘reading’” of places that simultaneously reflect and invert the rules of social engagement. Ultimately, Heterotopias functions as a reflection and critique of neoliberal individualism. The user temporarily forfeits social connection in order to enter the experience. While virtual reality is often discussed as an empathy machine, Heterotopias counters this expectation and proposes that it is, more accurately, a solitary alternative to existing forms of shared media consumption. Blindfolded and suspended, the user progresses through a series of vacant virtual spaces. The sites that Foucault once identified as radically-shared spaces are emptied out. Now, only the self is present.

(Heterotopias can be set up as an exhibition piece including the hanging chair with a space requirement of about 12x12 feet using the FOVE HMD and a Windows PC, all of above provided by the authors.)