The solid ground has disappeared. Thanks to the VR glasses, I float through a luminous portal and hear Laurie Anderson's voice in my ear: "You are now in the heart of the Chalkroom." Looking around, my gaze glides like a spotlight along a forest of graffiti and chalk sketches covering the black walls. Moving the controllers I was pressed into my hands at the start in different directions allows me to move in all directions. The beginning of a treasure hunt through a maze of rooms, tunnels and narrow corridors. A world full of words, drawings and whispered phrases you can freely dream away at.
Chalk cream is the virtual reality project by singer and performance artist Laurie Anderson and Taiwanese media artist Hsin-Chien Huang. Voted best VR Experience at the Venice Film Festival last year. Now the third presentation in the Xtended series, Eye's virtual reality programme.
Boundless dream
Artists are still exploring the possibilities of VR. This is evidenced, for example, by Anderson and Huang taking an approach opposite to Alejandro Iñárritu's with Carne y Arena. That was previous presentation in Xtended. Iñárritu places you in a deceptively real space (sand under your feet) where you can walk around among virtual refugees. The events have a more or less fixed sequence - you are in the middle of a short story, so to speak.
Chalk cream is boundless and reminiscent of a dream in which you can fly, a phenomenon that was a major inspiration for Anderson. With Iñárritu, you can actually walk around in a defined space. With Anderson - as with most VR performances - you just stay in your swivel chair while still flying around indefinitely. The events here don't have a set sequence either. You choose your direction and the different rooms yourself. You won't encounter people here - apart from Anderson's voice and some animated characters here and there.
Meditating or adventuring
For every visitor, the experience is different. So really, you should take this account of my experience with a grain of salt. In theory, you can also wander around in it for as long as you like. In practice, in Eye, the experience is limited to 15 minutes at a time. Those who want more have to re-enter. Personally, I did feel a certain tension due to this limitation. On the one hand, the tendency to try everything and look around everywhere as quickly as possible. On the other hand, the feeling that it might be better to single something out and take your time for that. Meditating or adventuring, you can do both, but obviously not at the same time.
As Anderson on her website tells is Chalk cream for the makers an experiment. When Huang approached her about a VR production, her first reaction was, "No, it's not for me." That because she mostly associated VR with games. But when Huang thought it was a good idea to try something different, something with a more handmade feel, she went for it after all.
Then it is funny to see that Chalk cream, as it is currently realised, still has a lot of game-like elements. Besides floating around at will, you can also choose from eight different 'rooms', actually worlds, each with their own possibilities. If you choose 'Free flight', for instance, you can even transcend the Chalkroom labyrinth. From a high position among the clouds, you can then look down on it. In 'Dog', Anderson confides that she dreamt she was a dog. In 'Words', you yourself make a text appear on the wall with a kind of magic wand. Words that, I fantasise, refer to the death of Anderson's father. In 'Cloud', you let the chalk sketches detach from the wall after which they circle around like a spiral mist. Wisps of poetry can appear in all sorts of places.
Story Dust
We see that their approach is consistent with the idea that VR is more suitable for an experience machine than a film in a 360-degree jacket. Freed from the narrative, the visitor chooses their own course. Incidentally, it is confusing in this context that this experience is sometimes called - also by Anderson - a 'journey through stories'. I did scratch my head about that for a while. Frankly, I don't know exactly what to imagine about such an undoubtedly conceptually intended journey through stories. Is it because the raw fabric of stories, the words, letters and phrases sometimes swirl around you like snowflakes? Is it the poetic phrase that 'things are made of words'? Here, among other things, beautifully visualised as a tree with letters as leaves. So far my favourite part.
There is no doubt much more to associate and interpret in this way, but it seems best not to get too complicated about it. Just let it wash over you. Floating free in a beautifully designed three-dimensional labyrinth, isn't that beautiful enough already?
Programme: VR, films, lecture
Chalk cream can be experienced daily from 30 August to 9 September at Eye Film Museum in Amsterdam. This VR programme will be complemented in the cinema by short performance registrations and some of Anderson's feature-length films, including the equally enchanting and moving Heart of a Dog.
Laurie Anderson herself will be at Eye on Friday 7 September (8pm). She will give a talk on her work, the importance of storytelling in politics and the value of failure. A presentation with images, music and references to the heroes who inspire Anderson.
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