Klein Room for Dream Sharing: Social Enaction in Virtual Reality

Oct 24

Yiou Wang and **Yujie Wang**

CHI 2022 paper under review;
Initial part done in July 2021 as part of Digital Futures 2021 Workshop: “Let Me Hear Your Body Talk”

Keywords

Virtual Reality, Games/Play, Human-Computer Interaction, Architecture, Design Methods, Theory, Social Enaction, Dream Sharing

Abstract

Space in virtual reality engenders an embodied spatiality anchored on movement, temporality, and liminality. Worlding in virtual reality can be a trans-media method that expresses and articulates curious relationships between space and its mediation on social events. Through the creation of VRChat-based world Klein Room and the hosting of the Dream Sharing event, we discuss the special properties and potentials of architecture and space in virtual reality, and explore the extent to which social VR enacts social interaction and intimate group sharing. Klein Room is composed using the everyday architectural language of room, corridor, and door, but it is designed with sensitivity to their highly non-neutral embodied spatio-temporal significance. The paradoxicality of Klein Room pairs with subconscious aspects of dream, and a spirit of playfulness is instilled in the innovative exploration in this spatially staged social VR.