Vision Statement:

The Room of Resonance is a poetic AR fable that conveys a story of questioning biases and media consumption behavior which are often affected by non-neutral algorithms present on social media platforms, often contributing to the proliferation of echo chambers.

Synopsis:

The Room of Resonance conveys the story of 3 animals living in a fictional kingdom which is left in complete and utter disharmony due to tainted source water. There is Reyn the fox, Eugene the peacock and Clancy the sardine whose rooms are presented for further investigation. The story unravels by the witty words of the jester, spinning rhyming tattletales about the objects in each animal’s room that reinforce certain negative beliefs about the animal while also metaphorically criticizing modern elements of media consumption behavior and online social presence.
The work is experienced through the use of a book and an AR projection in the vicinity of the book that is triggered by image tracking and interacting (tapping) on objects in the AR scene.

The prototype starts with a prologue after scanning the first image in the book which paints the fictional world for the user. In the prologue the user learns about the “plot issue” – animals disagreeing incessantly and a general unrest in the kingdom – and is urged to explore the animals’ rooms in order to know more. After the prologue the user is introduced to three echo chambers, which all appear individually, one after the other. Each echo chamber has its intro, outro and three virtual objects to interact with which are related to the animal and the biases we might have about them.

The more the user interacts with the object, the more distorted the output becomes, concretizing the echoes of an echo chamber. Not only does the audio distort, the script also changes, adding information to the previous interaction. This distortion is an element that occurs in each echo chamber. Once all rooms have been explored, the epilogue is triggered which reveals an unresolved ending (for now). The very last spread in the book contains splats of “water” (created with mirror foil), which is a recurring theme throughout the existing prototype. These water splashes are meant to reflect the user’s face back and if the pages are held in a certain angle it creates this “infinity room” effect that mirrors tend to do, further embodying the echo chamber as a physical concept.