Traces – The Grief Processor
A collective, immersive VR documentary exploring the intricacies of sorrow
TRACES is a collective, immersive VR documentary based on its creator Vali Fugulin’s own journey in the delicate intricacies of sorrow surrounding grief. It allows up to four participants to create their own personal tribute to a departed loved one – or other significant loss – exploring the “wild edge of sorrow” in a virtual space, while creatively processing that bundle of emotionally charged grief in a poetic, symbolic way.
Speaking to the user’s unconscious, TRACES is an art piece, a humanistic and social experience in which you and your grief become the main protagonists. Its participatory, reality-based storytelling explores notions of intimacy and the sacred in VR-XR technologies.
This docuXR journey is at the confluence of UGC participative narrativity, multiplayer mechanics and location-based VR experiences. It asks the essential questions of creating and documenting memories in the virtual world, the experience of creating one’s own narrative in real time, and the sharing of profound human emotions in the XR world.
Inspired by an atmosphere of discovery, and set in an evanescent surreal natural landscape, its collective storytelling mechanics evoke a never seen before docu-virtual ritual where sorrows and spirits are scattered in a part of nature thereby relieving us of grief and daring us to love once more.
“When we come to our grief with reverence, we find ourselves in right relationship with sorrow, neither too far away nor too close. We have entered into an ongoing conversation with this difficult, holy visitor. Learning we can be with our grief, holding it softly, and warmly, is the first task in our apprenticeship.” – Francis Weller
Representatives
Contact
Lead organisation
Couzin Films
Hardware
VR Headset for 3D prototype or computer for 2D screen capture demo
Team
Studio Couzin Inc. (Production company);
Ziad Touma (Producer);
Vali Fugulin (Writer and Creative Director);
Louis Thériault-Boivin (Technical director VR);
Ana Elena Medina (Art Director);
Solen Labrie Trépanier (Project Lead);
Camilo Vides (Lead Programmer);
Audrey Anne-Whittom (3D Artist);
Jérémie Roy (Programmer)
Gallery
