Information + Instructions:
Title: Our Cupidity Coda
Year: 2017
Format: Virtual Reality Literature [VR Poem]
Description: Mainstream Virtual Reality has yet to embrace poetry in any robust fashion. Our Cupidity Coda is a Virtual Reality Literature experience that seeks to address this imbalance. This VR Literature work is an allegorical poem deliberately designed to emulate conventions established in early cinematographic days (the silent soundtrack, white on black intertitle-like text, parallels to Kinetoscope viewing) so as to echo a similar sense of creative pioneering/exploration. Our Cupidity Coda is designed to be experienced multiple times in order to unstitch the poetic denseness. It’s a slow burn work for those that click with it.
Instructions and Navigation: Our Cupidity Coda is designed for viewing via an internet browser using a VR headset – no hand controllers are necessary. The work is designed for (initial) quick sharp consumption, then repeat plays for those with which it resonates. It is also viewable using only a desktop browser/monitor, but the recommended setup is a HTC Vive using a WebVR-enabled browser.
– If Viewing With A Virtual Reality Headset:
1. Load Our Cupidity Coda here on your desktop using a WebVR-enabled browser before pressing the white VR Visor icon in the bottom right of the screen to view through your VR headset.
2. The work will play through automatically: please have your headset prepared before loading the work in a browser window.
3. Please observe freely when viewing the 360 tableaus so as to absorb all aspects of the work (ie make sure to take note of the objects in the sky and close to the ground).
– If Viewing With A Desktop Browser Only:
1. Load Our Cupidity Coda here on your desktop computer using a WebVR-enabled browser.
2. The experience is designed to load immediately and will play through automatically.
3. Use your mouse to observe freely in the 3D space, especially when viewing the 360 tableaus (also reorient your mouse view in order to continue reading after viewing each tableau).
Reviews:
“Deceptively simple, this poetic work allows the VR space to echo the emotional resonances of a text that charts the course of a relationship, from spellbound beginning to bittersweet end. The imagery experienced early in the piece gives away to arresting majesty and even fear. Created in and intended to be experienced as VR, this piece avoids the pitfalls of its technology.” – 2018 Queensland Literary Awards, Digital Literature Judging Panel
“To read through the text of this VR poem by Mez Breeze takes only minutes, but it would be a mistake to think of this work as slight or even brief…It emphasises emotional and intellectual immersion over the pure sensory experience and rewards multiple viewings.” – Simon Groth, The Writing Platform
“This work emulates the conventions of early cinema. Just as early motion picture devices had the viewer look through a peephole window, the viewer (or reader) of Our Cupidity Coda is encouraged to treat the virtual reality headset in the same way.” –
“Our Cupidity Coda is such a beautiful piece.” – FILE Electronic Language International Festival Curation Team.
Awards + Exhibition History:
* July 2019: Listed in “From Twitterbots to VR: 10 of the Best Examples of Digital Literature”, The Conversation.
* June 2019: Published in ZeTMaG Zones d’Expressions Temporaires, Issue 4.2.
* September 2018: Shortlisted in the Queensland Literary Awards: Digital Literature Category.
* August 2018: Showcased at “Mind the Gap!” Electronic Literature Organisation Conference in Montreal, Canada.
* July 2018: Shortlisted in the Opening Up Digital Fiction Prize/Competition.
* January 2018: Finalist in the Madrid-based IV EX Experimental New Media Art Award.
* October 2017: Premiered at The Wrong Digital Art Biennale (read the New York Times review of the show here).
