Palina Komarova
LUNATYK, 2021
VR experience, six degrees of freedom
3D scans, point clouds, HMD, object
sound design by Kuba Nyc
The experience has been named after a play on the words lunatyk and “Luna” – name of a cinema in Warsaw. Lunatyk is Polish for ‘somnambulist’ or ‘sleepwalker’, a person talking or walking while asleep, with a less frequent component of engaging in other activities, exhibiting symptoms of incomplete motor centre inhibition. The English term ‘lunatic’, on the other hand, refers to a person affected with a severely disordered state of mind (insane).
Lunatyk is a Virtual Reality experience with a high degree of freedom in interaction. It is a subjective recording or documentation of space the authoress is personally involved with. Cinema interiors and screening theatres, the operator’s booth, the foyer, have all been scanned and mapped, the scan expanded to include narratives and mobile scenes. The viewer becomes a traveller across spaces and mysterious lives of different places, the authoress’ memories and suppositions. The artist asks the following question: once people leave, does a space begin living its own life, its own fantasies? What kind of experiences are we looking for in a darkened theatre? Are we looking into space, or is it reflected within us
