Eurydice: Descent into Infinity sets out to combine theatrical staging with opera with walking incredibly long distances in VR to reimagine the myth of Eurydice and Orpheus. The take-away feeling that I had from this experience was a deep and visceral sense of embodiment after taking what felt quite literally like a descent into infinity complete with moments of confusion, feeling lost, and generally being somewhat stuck within a liminal space. Turns out that this was somewhat by design as creator Celine Daemen wanted to lean heavily into the more confusing in-between aspects with throwing in a few impossible spaces in the experiences. But there was a lot of emphasis put upon the unfolding opera song as the primary focus while the visuals leaned more towards a somewhat repetitive series of loops of point-cloud representations as you circle around down to the bottom… or to the top. There are some choices that the user can make on their journey that will ultimately lead them to the same destination. There were also some elements of how the original myth of Eurydice and Orpheus plays out that were changed in this version, and so I’m not sure if it the story completely translates as I still have a lot of confusion around it. But there is a lot of room to take other opera songs and translate them into embodied experiences like this can amplify a whole mood, vibe, or visceral embodied experience that’s inspired by the music.
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Music: Fatality
