The fog and the emotions.
Romanticism was an artistic and intellectual movement in Europe between the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. It emphasized the importance of emotional sensitivity and individual subjectivity. For the Romantics, imagination, rather than reason, was the most important creative faculty (1). We talked about the relationship between Romanticism and immersive media during our recent lecture with Annie Wan, our Virtual Reality Course Leader.
Presented painting, the Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich is an example of romantic art. The viewer should not be focused on how real the scene in the painting looks, but how the author perceives it, on emotions and reflections it evokes.
This painting was a starting point for the exercise we were given. The task was to think of and briefly write about a never-ended VR experience based on this image.
When I first looked at the Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, I thought about the man having a moment of reflection on belonging and fitting in or rather not fitting in and wondering where or when he belongs. The character would decide to start a quest to find his real self.
Mysterious fog, a place of contemplation but also restlessness; something is calling; inner voice whispering to you to take a step forward; these are my thoughts around the image we worked with.
Wanderer above the Sea of Fog made me think of the Dark (2017-2020) Netflix series I have already watched once and recently decided to watch again. Time travelling and parallel worlds theme gave me an idea for the VR experience based on the above painting, where the main character is trapped in time travels.
At the beginning of the experience, the man stands on the rock and reflects on his identity etc. He feels the mysterious magnetic force of the fog calling him, telling him to immerse in the fog. He decides to jump and gets lost (or maybe actually not lost, but he thinks that he is lost, whereas it might be all well planned, even though the character thinks it is all accidental). The character lands on a rock and thinks he is still in the same place; just somewhere lower than the rock he has jumped from (not even considering he could land at a different time).
It turns out it is a different decade; based on what’s happening around him, he decides to try and go back to his rock. He then takes another jump hoping to go back where he has started. The character lands at a different time again. This scenario repeats. Our character is on the quest he wanted to start, he just did not predict how it is going to look like and where it will take him, or should we rather say when.
1. Kehoe, B. (2019). What is Romanticism? [online] National Trust. Available at: https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/features/what-is-romanticism [Accessed 02.12.2021].