Heterotopias is an interactive virtual reality experience based on Michel Foucault’s influential lecture, Des espaces autres. The experience leverages eye-tracking technology to transform users’ blinks into cinematic cuts. With every blink, the virtual space alters, producing variable configurations of stereo-360 footage and computer generated models. Throughout the experience, disembodied voices whisper selected phrases drawn from the original recording of Foucault’s 1967 lecture in French, as well as from readings of Jay Miskowiec’s 1984 English translation. To complement the ungrounded transformation of space, the user is suspended in a hanging chair. Heterotopias is directed by Noa Kaplan and Szilvia Ruszev and has been created with the support of the Jaunt Cinematic Lab and the Mobile and Environmental Media Lab at the University of Southern California.
