PREFACE:
Imagination sits at the core of this project not as something fixed but as a living process that moves through and reshapes systems. Sometimes it explores stories but other times, it embodies the stories themselves both viscerally and metaphorically.
For this project, I acted as creative lead and immersive VR artist, overseeing a choreographed dance scene that explored mental health through shifting landscapes, while supporting a brand and product activation focused on invisible UI and pre production, streamable camera technology, in collaboration with emerging practitioners working in Unreal Engine and motion capture.
PROJECT ASPECTS:
The project combined my hand-painted VR artwork with story, dance choreography, digital fluency, and sound-choir recordings. It was highly challenging on many levels, with a tight 15-day turnaround and a crew of nearly 20 people. At its core, the work celebrated the dialogue between story, imagery and XR digital creations, a dynamic interplay that explored the evolving “dance” between technology and human expression.
Here is the published Siggraph white paper: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3736539.3737497
Artist in Residence:
Everyone wants EMOTIONAL PIECES that MOVE THEM
Everyone wants EMOTIONAL PIECES that MOVE THEM
Living with Alzheimer’s isn’t easy. My mother has the disease, and while it’s been tough in so many ways, it’s also taught me a lot about what’s really important in life. In the Forest Wild XR project, I wanted to look at the themes of:
1)mental illness and 'connectivity'
2)the power of the arts especially in relation to XR spatial design
3)regeneration through nature
The wildfires burning through BC during the summer months and throughout other parts of Canada felt like the right metaphor; a description of destruction and renewal happening at the same time. Out of that mix, I started to see the pieces of metaphor that could carry my family's experience.
1)mental illness and 'connectivity'
2)the power of the arts especially in relation to XR spatial design
3)regeneration through nature
The wildfires burning through BC during the summer months and throughout other parts of Canada felt like the right metaphor; a description of destruction and renewal happening at the same time. Out of that mix, I started to see the pieces of metaphor that could carry my family's experience.
This is how I imagined our project:
Forest Wild XR is a live, time-bound immersive performance exploring cognitive illness as lived emotional experience rather than something to be explained or simulated. Dancers embody shifting internal states, and their movement actively reshapes a responsive forest in real time. Music/choir is recorded as part of the ephemeral voice. Emotion becomes spatial and consequential, allowing meaning to emerge through presence rather than narration.
The work frames inner conflict as felt experience rather than intent, and concludes with a fragile moment of stillness after turbulence signaling integration rather than resolution. Designed to be ephemeral and purposefully unreplayable, Forest Wild XR exists as testament to living fully in the moment.
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Here is one of my many Emotion Maps that I created to enable our choreographer to use dance to interpret the project. It worked well because it enabled everyone to understand what they were seeing, hearing etc. A cross between an empathy map and my own analysis, it offered a diagnostic POV to everything we did.
The Perfect Metaphor for a Product Activation
Like advertising campaigns, products use stories and experiences to sell aspirational goals. While I am not privy to all the things the NZTech (gesture-based UI) represents, I do know that it is has been used in real life as part of surgical UI allowing surgeons to swipe through information and data using hand gestures.
By introducing the NZTech to our project, head developer Jonathan Bierman and junior designer Skye Higgins were able to design an experience that merged artwork and landscape by way of specific hand gestures.
Our dancer Clara Xu was able to direct fireflies along the pathway or activate elements seemingly game-like in tone and style by a simple wave of her hand. The combination of product design, relatable story, art direction and innovative UI opened up audiences eyes to a potential new market from health and medicine to games and XR realities.
These are the team members and the names of the people who made it happen.
Some photos of the crew in action
What is Being Affected? (Environment vs Humans and vice versa)
1. The dancers (their actions) are affecting the actual trees within the virtual environment. Each mocapped hand gesture made the trees rustle violently thereby communicating the change in mood and emotion.
2. The fireball and the flowers were on a sequence timer using unreal engine to simulate affects on the forest environment.
3. The ghosts with the uni-tail are following templated dance moves pre-captured from a mocap library and programmed into Unreal Engine
NEWS FLASH: November 30: We have been invited to show at PXR Festival 2026
It's always nice when someone recognizes your work, story, creative project etc. In 2023, my team was invited to share our award-winning VR worlds (Dragon Magic and Freedom Giants) with the Performance and XR Festival. It was an amazing experience.
Just recently, I was invited again but this time with a completely different crew to share Forest Wild XR in Jan-Feb 2026. Since most of the work was done by students, I'll be happy to offer the audience a glimpse of their processes. It will be the first time they will speak from a world stage. Thank you Liam and PXR team.
NEWS FLASH: December 23 2025:
We were nominated for the AUREA AWARDS show in 2026 by my dear friend Evo
It was a total surprise representing my third nomination in these last 3 years.
Testimonial:
"A very nuanced piece with so many dynamic parts. This story focuses on a very strong and emotional theme yet is both poignant and entertaining at the same time. The perfect metaphor for our time". - Siggraph 2025
