Zeitgefühl (VR)

In 2024, I completed my Bachelor's thesis titled Sense of Time – An Exploration of Immersive Technologies in the Context of Time Perception.

My project focused on making time tangible and perceptible through immersive technologies, aiming to create a new awareness that could influence our daily experience of time. From September 27 to October 6, 2024, my work was exhibited at Folkwang FINALE 24, the presentation of all final projects in the Department of Design (Folkwang University of the Arts). The response was overwhelmingly positive, with visitors deeply engaging with the installation. The photographs documenting the exhibition were taken by Kimberly Jüschke (Photo 1) and Sasha Kholkina (Photo 3). The 4-channel sound design was created by dieterkong.

Concept

At the core of my work lies the duality of eternity and finiteness, expressed through two distinct experiential spaces:

Space 1 – The Flow of Time

‍This space symbolizes the continuous, endless flow of time. In an abstract temporal loop, emptiness dominates — a shared experience of stillness and immersion. Three projectors cast visuals onto three walls, accompanied by a four-channel audio system, creating a CAVE (Cave Automatic Virtual Environment). The projection depicts a space that gradually fills and empties over ten minutes, reminiscent of an hourglass. The immersive soundscape enhances the sensation of time unfolding cyclically, inviting visitors to focus and reflect.

Space 2 – Personal Time‍

In contrast, the second space offers an individualized, digital-metaphysical experience. Here, time is finite and deeply personal. Using a Kinect depth sensor and VR headset, the installation captures the visitor's body and immerses them in a virtual space devoid of light, where their own presence becomes the sole visual reference. Every ten seconds, digital imprints of the body are left behind, creating ephemeral time echoes. Over a minute, these traces accumulate into a sculptural display, only to dissolve back into nothingness, repeating the process. Unlike traditional VR, this world does not introduce a new reality but reflects the visitor’s own existence in time.

Theoretical Framework – Time and Immersion

The nature of time is difficult to define, and various perspectives exist. My research focused on the phenomenological approach, particularly Edmund Husserl’s early 20th-century theories on time perception. He argued that we experience the now as an interval rather than a single point, encompassing the “not yet,” the “now,” and the “no longer.” This continuum shapes our consciousness, making time a fluid transition between past and future rather than a static moment.

Immersion — the act of deep involvement — has been a fundamental human experience across literature, film, theater, and gaming. It aims to dissolve the barrier between reality and fiction, fully engaging the senses. Two key aspects guided my work:

Absorption: The process of losing oneself in an experience, where reality fades into the background. This shift takes time, much like the moment a reader becomes fully engrossed in a book.

Transportation: The sensation of being transferred into another reality. In my installation, this principle was used to make the intangible nature of time perceptible.

To achieve this, I employed two immersive strategies:

- Enclosed environments such as panoramic projections, 360° visual spaces, and CAVEs.

- Wearable devices like VR headsets that merge human perception with digital constructs, intensifying the relationship between self and world.

Creating a Deeply Personal Experience

One of my central questions was: How can immersive technologies create an intense, personal engagement with time? A key reference in my research was The Immortal, a short story by Jorge Luis Borges from El Aleph (1949). The protagonist seeks the river of immortality, only to find beings who have transcended human experience, existing without purpose or meaning. Their endless existence becomes a burden, revealing that without finiteness, time loses all significance. Only upon returning to mortality does the protagonist recognize the true value of each fleeting moment. Borges’ reflections on the interwoven nature of time and eternity were integral to shaping my conceptual approach.