I interviewed Sarah Silverblatt-Buser about Collective Body on Friday, August 29, 2025 at Venice Immersive in Venice, Italy.
Here is the story synopsis for Collective Body:
- “Collective Body is an interactive, virtual reality experience that invites us to meet ourselves and each other through movement. Set in the middle of a New Mexican storm, participants are guided to rediscover their first ways of engaging with the world, symbolising formative life events that culminate in a shared exploration of our embodied selves. These key moments — beginning alone, discovering the unfamiliar, first encounters, and joyfully moving together — represent how our personal and collective stories are written through movement.”
Here are the contextual domains that are explored:
- Gain deeper insight into self and Identity [1] and others [7] through embodied movement [1] and dance [5], but also these various archetypal [9] identities [1] within the context of a cultural context [11] – lots of self [1] and other [7] dialectics. “Meet ourselves and each other through movement.”
Here is the Elemental Center of Gravity:
1st Center of Gravity of Earth Element / Environmental and Embodied Presence: Embodied Dance experiences, with avatars that are attuned to how your move your body. Set in a New Mexican storm. Avatars have an abstract and symbolic quality to them. Designed to “open us to different sensations of our physical world while creating a new perception of ourselves as individuals within a collective.” |
2nd Center of Gravity of Fire Element / Active Presence: Emphasis on MOVEMENT and IMPROV — The specific way in which you move your is analyzed and classified |
3rd Center of Gravity of Air Element / Mental and Social Presence: Multiplayer and social experience. There’s a way to connect to others through movement. The archeteypal classification of the movement is split up into a 4×4 set of categories of 4 different elements (earth, air, water, fire), and then 4 different musical themes that also mirror an increasing amount of energy of the phases of matter. (Solid, Liquid, Gas, Plasma) |
4th Center of Gravity of Water Element / Emotional Presence: Strong Emphasis on MUSIC. The Piece itself is a bit more driven by embodied actions and emergenct social dynamics than narrative or story per se. The piece is more about the relational dynamics to yourself and others that unfolds over the course of five different stages |
Archetypal Themes and Character Explored:
- Movement and Social Dynamics – Invidivual versus Collective Journey: “Collective Body asks what it means to experience ourselves in relation to others — without words and beneath the surface. How does a body hold histories over time? How do those histories get expressed and interpreted? How do many bodies create their own ecology?”
Artist Statement:
- “The experience uses virtual reality to open us to different sensations of our physical world while creating a new perception of ourselves as individuals within a collective. We are first guided to reappropriate movement and dancing in our own body, to rediscover our first ways of engaging with the world, before we meet the silent part of ourselves that we express through movement. This otherwise ephemeral self is generated using an algorithmic system that analyses our movement throughout the first two scenes. This self takes the form of an avatar, assigned out of sixteen possible avatars, and is represented as a natural element accompanied by a musical theme. Once we meet this version of ourselves, we are invited to meet another person, then join the rest of the participants, encountering different ways that others exist through movement, mixing together to create a final moment of joyful, collective discovery in dance. Collective Body asks what it means to experience ourselves in relation to others — without words and beneath the surface. How does a body hold histories over time? How do those histories get expressed and interpreted? How do many bodies create their own ecology?”
This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.
Music: Fatality
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