Finant
Finant is a VR neurofeedback meditation game. To experience Finant, you would need a VR and Muse EEG headset. The EEG headset detects our brainwaves, which in turn controls the ball to move up or downwards. You can:
1) Concentrate to Move Ball
When our concentration level is over 50%, we would be able to conjure a sphere, and have it float upwards. When our concentration level is below 50%, the sphere would float downwards. This gives us the illusion of telepathically controlling the movement of a sphere in our VR environment.
2) Relax to Move Ball
It is the same as version 1, except we are using our relaxation values, rather than focus values, to conjure and move the ball. To elaborate, when our mellow values are over 50%, we would be able to conjure a sphere, and have it float upwards. When our mellow level is below 50%, the sphere would float downwards.
Inspired by an ancient geometric sea cave known as Fingal’s cave, I created a VR meditation game for Until Reality’s experimental VR event. Fingal's Cave is formed entirely from hexagonally jointed basalt columns within a Paleocene lava flow, 56-66 million years ago. It looks like a computer-generated procedural 3D cave rendered by mother earth – so I went and took photos as well as 360 videos on the location.
I’ve always been fascinated by caves and grottos as I felt like they are naturally formed temples. I always felt peaceful in them. In Fingal’s cave, I didn’t just feel like peace, but that part of me died, and I just left it there, and it was okay because it goes back into the land and sea.
So the experience inspired me to create Finant, a VR meditative experience that allows you to telepathically control a sphere by moving it up and down the environment.
If you concentrate, you can move the sphere upwards, and when you relax, you can move the sphere downwards. How can one concentrate and relax? Each user would have to experiment with their internal narrative, and use different meditation techniques to move the sphere up and down. The goal of finant is to mimic the effect of lucid dreaming, it is a dream without narrative.
I believe that it is in our repressed consciousness, and in our inconvenient emotions, where we can find our personal truth. We need to survive, to connect, to interact with the world, yes, but it has come from an authentic place before the interaction can be meaningful in any way. And one way to access this mystery of our ancient brain, to navigate those waters between our emotion and logic, our ID and Super-Ego – is via meditation. We all live hectic lives, and are doing many things simultaneously, but if one can maintain a stillness while balancing all the emotion and logic within – that is being in the flow. The flow of a meditative state. It allows you to handle every situation with ease – where all drama dissolves, and communication is built, so we can express ourselves, and take action, in an empathetic, win/win state.
I hope to re-create that flow with VR meditative experiences.
Full circle from the tomb of the womb to the womb of the tomb we come, an ambiguous, enigmatical incursion into a world of solid matter that is soon to melt from us like the substance of a dream. ~ Joseph Campbell