Psyia

In a black void, uncountable technicolour specks dance and flow around force-fields you control. Endless hypnotic and beautiful behaviours emerge from the simplest of physical laws.

Psyia is an exploration in allowing for true freedom in VR.

The traditional approach to permitting freedom in digital experiences is a bottom-up cycle of careful design and thorough user-testing. Designers will create systems, examine to see where users come up against the limits of those systems and then expand the systems in those areas until users feel sufficiently free.

Psyia takes a different, top-down approach. By creating a simulation that is entirely self-coherent and taking in all possible hardware interactions, Psyia explores the limit-case for user freedom within its own context. By dynamically analyzing the user’s behaviour and modifying the simulation to complement it, Psyia maintains novelty and interest without ever revealing to the user the limitations of its own operation.

In this way, Psyia permits a true experience, not limited by the development constraints of repeated development/testing cycles. Instead, a user’s experience of Psyia is limited only in their own eagerness to explore the system and, by extension, themselves.

Psyia has been exhibited at BuzzConf 2017 & 2018, The Town 2018, Burning Seed 2018 and is currently featured in The Museum of Other Realities.