Hsin-Chien Huang’s Bodyless is definitely my most stunning VR experience.

After being selected in Venice Virtual Reality and awarded “Honorary Mention” by Ars Electronica a few weeks ago, Bodyless again won the Golden Mask in the Official XR competition at New Image Festival, France,  all praise proved that Bodyless is an excellent VR experience with poetic, emotional storytelling and well-designed interactions. However, to me, this VR work is not merely inspiring, but a scary experience that drags me into the darkest history of Taiwan.

The trailer and screenshots of Bodyless emit an intense, deepening sorrowful vibe that may stop some audiences from appreciating this VR piece. Indeed, Bodyless is about a political criminal’s journey after his death under the Martial Law of Taiwan in 1960, thus, viewers must be mentally prepared before starting this tough experience in VR. At the very beginning, the viewer will first face the imprisoned man’s corpse in a prison cell(Fig 1), then realize he has now become a ghost, which is exactly the perspective of the viewer. Suddenly, the scene fade to darkness, a spiritual guide with a traditional Ba Jia Jiang 八家將 painted face(Fig 2) shows up, calling the soul to a place where is neither heaven nor hell, but a so-called middle world where many lost souls will experience sacred ceremony (Fig 3) including the burning of king boat(Fig 4) and set the floating paper lotuses on water. Following the shimmers in the darkest netherworld, the viewer wanders between the past and future, eventually returns to a mediocre house, waiting for being released from the cruel, bloody homeland.

Like most narrative VR works, in Bodyless, the audience will have the agency to look, walk around the scenes, and even "fly" in order to approach specific landmarks. However, the narrative is still guided by the artist, therefore in some scenes, the audience will be forced to fly in a direction or look at specific props. The flying feature is a common effect in many VR works - it creates a surreal sense of moving beyond two dimensions, and also empowers audiences to reach the boundaries. In Bodyless, flying presents the out-of-body experience of death and implies that only after death, are those imprisoned people able to be free, even though their journeys are still manipulated by metaphysical forces, such as gods and their dead relatives.

Hsin-Chien Huang wisely adapted cultural motifs and appalling histories to construct symbolized visual elements and depressing tones in order to create an epic and solemn journey that complicates viewers' experience of being dead and alive simultaneously, in virtual reality and IRL. The entire visual style is nearly photorealistic, yet it is made using a 3D game engine, inevitably that some visual effects need to be sacrificed due to the computational efficiency of rendering. Low polygon humanoid models, hard shadows, and distorted textures cause an uncanny feeling, (Fig 4, Fig 5), which becomes Hsin-Chien Huang’s distinctive style that we can see a similar approach in his previous work, La Camera Insabbiata. These mysterious effects make the virtual environment thrilling and relate to the traditional crafts in Taiwan, those paper offerings that are produced to be destroyed. In Bodyless, many surfaces of objects are rendered with paper textures like yellowing photos, fragmented newspapers, and rough joss paper. Paper is strong enough to fold any shapes like lotus, and boat, but also fragile enough to be burned down in minutes. When the viewer is finding a home, flying underwater into the abyss, he/she will soon be shocked by a giant flower of life that connects dense buildings which are constructed by newspapers (Fig 6). The entire scene is an accusation against the government for using traditional media as propaganda and burning down banned books and separating families just because some of them are intellectual and awaken during the Martial law period in Taiwan.

Bodyless depicts a complex and intertwining world that represents the sophisticated sense of dying and struggles of denying the dark history. Considering the contemporary context, being bodyless may not be bizarre, because people may have experienced through comprehensive ways like VR and hypnosis, but given the background of that era in Taiwan, bodylessness and death serve as both hope and desperation paradoxically for those who are imprisoned and silent. It scares viewers and simulates the loss and helplessness, only through this strong immersive experience, we can really put in those prisoners’ shoes, to admit and forgive the bloody history.

Bodyless

• Artist: Hsin Chien Huang
• Medium: Interactive VR Film
• Length: 31 Minutes

Screenshots of Bodyless are from Kaohsiung VR Film Lab. https://vrfilmlab.tw/en/movie/bodyless/