<aside> 🐳 An interactive VR & Immersive Auditory Experience by Digital Direction Students at RCA
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What is the Whale Fall phenomenon?
Decay sets in soon after the death of a whale, as the insides begin to decompose. The animal then expands with gas and sometimes floats up to the ocean's surface, where it can be scavenged by sharks and seabirds.
Eventually the ocean giant will begin to sink, falling kilometre after kilometre, until finally coming to rest on the seabed. This is when the carcass becomes known as a whale fall.
Whale falls can nourish an entire ecosystem of deep-sea creatures, from large scavengers to microscopic bacteria. They provide inhabitants of the mostly deserted ocean floor with a sudden and immense source of food.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqmTGX9Gy08
‘Whale Fall’ is an immersive and interactive Virtual Reality experience that addresses and informs the audience on the issue of marine plastic pollution and its effect on whales. A ‘Whale Fall’ occurs when a whale dies, sinks to the bottom of the ocean and sustains a rich marine ecosystem for decades. Using this phenomenon as an anchor, we have created a deep-sea environment in which viewers can virtually immerse themselves and interact with the fallen whale.
Narrative: The experience starts with the players on the ocean floor who look up to see a deceased sperm whale, her body entangled in a ghost net, slowly falling toward them from the ocean surface. After she falls on the ground, the interactive experience begins and the players can walk around the whale’s body. As they get closer and see her body entangled in nets and human generated trash, they are nudged to pick it up. Their actions trigger the decomposition of the whale’s body and blooming of the marine ecosystem. Witnessing first-hand how their proactive efforts to clean up the oceans contribute to the thriving of the marine ecosystem, the experience ends with a sense of hope.
According to the UN, life below water is the most overlooked sustainable development goal. Whales, one of the largest accumulators of carbon, are extremely crucial for the fertilization of global marine ecosystems and keeping climate change at bay. However, human actions threaten their existence as plastic permeates into the marine environment that whales feed in, ingestion of which can lead to fatalities. Fishing gear and ghost nets pose major hazards. Our project emphasises this by referencing a real-life story in which a pregnant sperm whale was found dead with more than 22 kg of plastic in her stomach in 2019 in Sardinia, Italy. She died due to a Gastric shock.
We decided to make the story in VR, since we aim to rely on the transformative power of immersive virtual reality to instill a sense of awe for whales and the marine ecosystem, a concern for their survival and hope that it is still not too late to act. We used Unreal Engine, Cinema 4D and Houdini to create the experience for viewing on Oculus Quest headset.