Hypnagogia

The problem

We needed to make a viewer physically feel a shift from calm to anxious. Not describe it, but put their body inside it.

It had to work across sculpture, projection and audio at once, as a team, with no single medium able to carry the effect on its own.

What I tried

We tested projected visuals directly onto the interior construction, to see how the organic contour projections read once you were sitting inside them.

In parallel I prototyped several audio compositions and helped set up the VR layer that feeds in a live, distorted view of the outside world.

The audio

The final composition is what drives everything else in the room.

What I changed

Early on, the audio and visuals just played alongside each other.

I re-routed my composed track through TouchDesigner so it analyzes the audio in real time and drives both the projected visuals and the subpack’s haptic output directly, instead of two tracks running independently and drifting apart.

Why

A nightmare is not something you watch. It is something that happens to you.

Making the visuals and haptics audio-reactive in real time was the only way the descent could feel like it was escalating because of what was happening around the visitor moment to moment, rather than watching a fixed timeline play out.