HanaHana 花華
HanaHana 花華 is an artistic VR experience created by the artist Mélodie Mousset together with VR engineer Naëm Baron in 2017.
Imagine if Minecraft & Tilt brush met in a Salvator Dali painting. You are the first person player in HanaHana 花華. You are the life-force in a desert sandbox gameplay. Thanks to the simple mechanic and the eery soundscape, the immersion is instantaneous. Embodied in a cloud of molecules, you are granted the ability to teleport and to create. With teleport you can explore everywhere, with create you can grow… hands, chain of hands and everything you can think of from this root component. Take part in an harrowing and thrilling journey into the depths of your mind, body and senses and be part of a unique collaborative art piece in VR.
In the first version of HanaHana 花華, creations are persistent : in each iteration of the experience, community of users collectively co-create a new, hand-made metaverse.
The game takes its name and inspiration from the famous manga “One Piece” in which the character Nico Robin has the power to infinitely sprout and replicate her own body parts on any visible surfaces thanks the magic of the Hana Hana no Mi devil fruit. The VR game grants the player with the powers of Nico Robin to experience for themselves the excitement, the awe, the fear, emerging with the multiplication of our physical body in the digital space.
Technicals
- Room-scale, first person view Virtual Reality. Playable in walking or sitting position.
- Collaborative sandbox gameplay.
- Platform: PC
- VR hardware: HTC Vive, Oculus (coming soon)
- Game engine: Unity
- Special exhibition installation: player space with haptic enhancements (real sand), holographic effect for non-playing audience, contextual art pieces.
Exhibitions
11 / 2017
Virtual Territories Selection, Geneva International Film Festival
Geneva, Switzerland
10 / 2017
Westbound museum
Shanghai, China
10 / 2017
RIXC Festival
Riga, Latvia
09 / 2017
VR Days Europe
Amsterdam, Netherlands
08 / 2017
SwissGame Selection, Gamescom
Cologne, Germany
06 / 2017
“A fresh burn like a double-tree”, Salts
Birsfelden, Switzerland
05 – 06 / 2017
AUGMENTED WORLD CONFERENCE
Santa Clara, USA
05 / 2017
Official Selection, WVRF Annual Summit
Crans-Montana, Switzerland
Winner of “Best Interactivity” award
01 / 2017
“Unframed World”, HeK
Basel, Switzerland
The first large scale VR exhibition in Europe
11 / 2016
“NAUSEA”, COMPUTER HISTORY MUSEUM
Mountain View, USA
News
The nine most fascinating new indie games at Gamescom
01.09.2017, The Guardian
Mélodie Mousset
Mélodie Mousset (*1981 in Abu Dhabi) is a french artist based in Zurich, Switzerland. Oscillating between virtual and physical realms Mélodie’s work focus on the physicality of the human body and the potential virtuality of the mind through numerous mediums, including: performance, video, installation, photography, sculptures and interactive media. She received the Swiss art award for her first VR installation “We were looking for ourselves in each other” in 2015 and her work is regularly exhibited internationally. Mélodie is a visiting professor at ECAL, Switzerland since 2015.
She has studied at EBAR (FR), ECAL (CH), RCA (UK) and completed her Master of Fine Arts at CALARTS (USA).
Created in 2017 HanaHana 花華 is an outgrowth of Mélodie’s ongoing exploration of the liminal space between technology and self.
Naëm Baron
Naëm discovered Virtual Reality 2006 to become an expert in this field, since then he worked on scientific research, videogames and art. In 2010, he got a MSc in computer science with a specialization in VR driven by his passion for the intrication between the human and the computer. After a first professional experience working in the industry, he joined the University of Geneva to create the VR laboratory as a technical manager. He took part in multiple research projects on affective sciences, psychology and neurosciences. In 2015, he worked on Mélodie’ OrganIsland, a VR artistic experience, laureate of the “Swiss Arts Awards 2015”. This passion for art leads to a new collaboration in 2016, HanaHana 花華.
Naëm continue to explore the medium of VR and its usage on art, videogames and society.
Contributors
VR
Music and sound · Joe Willams
3D · Guillaume Arnaudo
Animation · Romain Ferrand
Video editing · Ashby Collinson & Gustav Hoder
Graphic Design · Marietta Eugster & Thomas Petit
Web
Concept and Design · Marietta Eugster
Coding · Ingo Lemper
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