#1819：『Eyes of Shame』は問われることを求める――身体化されたストーリーテリングの制約について、私は問いを投げかけた

The Voices of VR Podcast. Hello, my name is Ken Pai, and welcome to the Voices of VR Podcast. It's a podcast that looks at the structures and forms of immersive storytelling, and the features of spatial computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. So continuing my series from Venice Immersive 2026, today's episode is with a piece called Eyes of Shame. So this is a piece that I think over time I've had more and more problems with it. As the creator, Thomas, he says this is the piece that should be interrogated. It should be questioned. And I think he's deliberately being a bit provocative in the sense of one of the basic provocations of how can you start to tell a story when you start to restrict the movement of the person who is embodied into this character. And so there's all sorts of ways that happen over the course of this piece where you're restrained, your movement is locked down. It feels like you're in the piece, you're playing a character as a troubled teen within the mental institution, and you're also having eating disorder, and they're kind of trying to force feed you.

And then as you're asked to do these different actions throughout the course of the piece, more and more your embodied movements are being restricted from moving. But the other thing that I was really focusing on this interview was, you know, to what degree is Thomas connected to this? He's not a troubled female teen with an eating disorder. Why is he telling this story? Why is he telling the story in this particular way, which has some particularly intense scenes of it where the mother dies by suicide two or three times? And it's just particularly like traumatizing. And just also her additional stories of instructions he was giving to the docents, asking people to not be able to turn down the sound. And to what degree do we have consent over the way that we're able to control different aspects of our experience? And they seem to be the type of experience that he's really playing with these different ideas and concepts in a way that's feeling a little bit of like what's the layers of consent that are being violated here, particularly in terms of like as you're moving your body around. So it's a provocative piece and one that I think as I have more and more conversations, more and more critical discussions.

And as I go back and listen to it, I'm also in this weird place as a part oral historian, part critic. And most part, I want to get someone's story. So I kind of default to the oral history. But I think this is a piece that deserves much more robust criticism in terms of deconstructing all these various different power dynamics. And so that may be beyond the scope of what I'm able to achieve here, providing a little bit of that in this introduction. But I think there's much more critiques around a piece like this. And, yeah, the creators seem to be inviting that. He says he should be questioned and that this piece should be questioned. And so, yeah, I guess I'm just doing those additional layers of questioning now for the rest of the community to start to also critically reflect on pieces like this. So we're covering all that and more on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Thomas happened on Saturday, September 5th, 2026 at Venice Immersive in Venice, Italy. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in. My name is Thomas, Thomas Chaitis. I am Lithuanian director and author.

I am the creator of the animated VR film Eyes of Shame We have a piece in competition here It's my first VR film So I'm very happy to have the world premiere In Venice Film Festival and in Venice Immersive Great, maybe you could give a bit more context as to your background And your journey into the space Initially I'm coming from the theatre Then from the theater, quite a long time ago, I moved to animation But doing hand-drawn 2D animation, I own a small studio in Lithuania, which is an animated studio And just recently, we decided to move to another territory for us, something new, VR So here we are Nice. Maybe you could give it a bit more context and tell me a bit about what the story is that you're telling with Eyes of Shame. In short, this is a story about a 14-year-old girl, so-called problematic teenager.

Her nickname is Eyeless. Within the film, she is hospitalized. At the moment that we meet her in the film, she's hospitalized at the problematic teenager's hospital. and the user is fully synchronized with our main character within the film. So generally as a user you are being the main character in the film. You have different points of view. Most of the time I had an idea that I would like the user to experience, to have the feeling that they are in the thoughts, in the mind of the main character all the time. but also at some points I wanted the user to have a different experience so we changed the position of the user so sometimes the user is in mind of the main character and sometimes from observing her from outside. Nice. And so maybe you could just give a bit more context for how did this story come about? It started quite a long time ago, more or less 10 years ago. I started to volunteer in Problematic Teenagers Hospital in Dylnus, in Lithuania.

At that point, I didn't think about making any film about that. I just wanted to volunteer. I just wanted to do something concrete and useful. So I just started to have animation workshops with the Problematic Teenagers in such kind of institutions. and slowly, bit by bit, I realized observing the environment, observing the kids during the workshops, during which we were creating short animations together with the kids, we were creating the story, their own story I have a certain method, how to do it in 2-3 hours because usually these teenagers, when we work with them, you need to think about that it should be condensed and short, it can't last for So, you know, weeks and days because usually they don't know how to concentrate for a longer time, so it should be quite condensed. So within two, three hours, we were creating short animations, and I was actually struck by the fact that they lack so much confidence.

From the very beginning, when we start to work, most of them, they say, I don't know how to draw, I don't know how to create, which is not usually expected because we have the same workshops outside such institutions and children are usually very keen to engage into everything and just to play around with the things. While in this place, the same age, teenagers, they were always doubting themselves. And then on the other hand, I was observing the grown-ups around us, grown-ups from the staff or parents passing by and looking at me, working with them trying to convince the kid like look, you know how to draw the circle you can do two dots so it's already the face, no? Then two more lines, we already have the hands, it's not so complicated just do it, just do it and so these adults coming to us and telling to me but in front of children as if they were deaf, like

Oh, you know, you shouldn't put so much effort with our kids. They are special, you know. And so slowly I started to think, you know, when somebody's voice, because for me it was very coherent with the lack of confidence in the kids. You know, I was thinking, if you hear these things around you all the time, that you are special, you don't know how to do things, it's not aggressive but maybe it's more dangerous because it's not aggressive because it slowly slides into your head and slowly this voice from outside starts to become your own voice so for me it was very interesting to understand which is the point when somebody else's voice becomes our own voice I also realized that people know very little about problematic teenagers when I started to go there and to work with them, I understood that there is no information about that. So then I started to think, but, okay, I have this profession.

Maybe I do films. Maybe I can do something about that. And this is how it started, and then it went through the different forms, you know, what it should be, documentary, animated documentary, something else, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And finally we ended up with VR film, animated VR film. Nice, and so where did you begin in terms of the world building? There's a character design, there's a whole color palette, and there's also a script, and so I'm just curious where you began in terms of putting this piece together. We started with my co-writer, French co-writer Emmanuel Rouglan. We started first of all to build the story and the script. So generally we scripted the story. it doesn't mean that the script didn't change later but we scripted, we have it very clear written we both are filmmakers we both are coming from the usual filmmaking background so we are used to have the script

and then when we scripted it we started to I started actually to think about okay, now it's VR and it's 3D and I'm coming from 2D and I, to be honest, I didn't like 3D at all because I was coming from the background where 2D was hand-drawn and everything, you know, is not perfect and the lines are curved and this is considered to be interesting and nice. And in 3D world, you have everything, you know. So from my point of view, at that point, looking a bit too plastic, too artificial. And in VR, I understood if I want to do VR, I can't escape that. So the main question for me was how we can translate, how we can find the universe in 3D which looks like 2D. So we spent quite a lot of time with our art graphic designer, with our programmer, looking for the certain type of lighting, looking for the certain type of textures for the characters, for the environment, for the objects, until we ended up with something which reminded comic book drawings for the adults.

So this was our aim. Yeah, I hope it worked. Yeah, no, it's got a very distinct style, I think, and also a color palette. And so maybe just talk about the development of the character design and the process of designing what Eilis as a character would look like. It was such a long time ago, I'm trying now to remember. Generally, with this graphic designer that was also involved in this film, we are collaborating since a long time, so we know each other very well. So usually what we do, since she's drawing everything, she's doing the actual drawing, is we talk, first of all. I describe what I want. Sometimes I do the sketch, but usually I don't do that because in the beginning I try not to impose because it's not just mine, no. It's her drawing, so it should be also her drawing as well. She should do something natural for her, not just try to produce something which she thinks it's coming from me, you know.

It should be organic for her as well. So we generally talk. Maybe I provide a few references, but like visual references, which direction it should be. So she does simple sketch, and then starting from this point, from the simple sketch, we go one or another direction. for me, for example, the very important moment was that I wanted initially all the characters to be, you know, like in 3D, when they create the character, they tend to have both sides, you know, equally, perfectly the same. And from the initial point of view, we have like one eyebrow totally different from the other, even in the default position. And for example, the animators, 3D animators were saying, yeah, but you can do this later in animation, but I was really doubting that and I understood that later when animating, I understood that it was the right choice to have the initial avatar or the character in the default position already having certain emotion in the face not just blank emotion which later could be animated Because in the end animation for this project was so complex and it so subtle in some places

And I really, as a director, demanded lots of very tiny psychological things to be expressed through the animation. So it was good not to have initially just default, neutral face expressions of the character. So, for example, with Islas, with the main character, we were looking for the face expression, which is already, which I could fall in love with, just looking at the character. and not, you know, just... This is, for me, the main criteria. If I look at the character's sketch, and, for example, okay, it's not for this project, but we do other animations for smaller kids, so I always think if I would be a kid, would I like to have a toy like that or not? If I would like to have a toy like that, and I would play with it, then yes, maybe it's working. So maybe it was not to this point with this project because it's for the adults, But yes, I'm always thinking that, okay, could I relate to this face of the character?

Could I feel something for it? Because you can't calculate for everyone, you know. We are all different. Some people will like it, some people won't like it. And it's fine with me. But still, if even I don't fall in love with the character, so who can do that? So first it's me who should fall in love with the character. Well, this is a story around guilt and shame, but also what seems to be like an eating disorder that IELTS is being pressured to eat throughout the entirety of the experience. And so maybe just talk a bit about how you wanted to take what you saw while volunteering with these troubled youth or troubled teenagers, problematic teenagers, and how you wanted to translate that into an immersive experience that shared a little bit more around what their experiences might be like. But it seems like there's a lot of themes around guilt and shame, but also obstinance when it comes to eating. And I don't know if that's part of the eating disorder complex that can be attributed to that.

but there seems to be a core tension between eating throughout the course of this piece and being force-fed to eat, but also these deeper feelings. The piece is literally called the Eyes of Shame, so you're kind of really getting at these feelings of shame. So I'm just curious how you took this original idea and then wanted to start to use virtual reality to explore these themes of shame. Eating disorder itself, and in general eating in this film, this is just the external trigger. It's the first layer because then it's for the user to decode. Because usually I try not to explain the things because part of this film is ambiguity. It's for the user to decide what is what. It's for the user, based on his or her experience, the experience they bring with them into watching this piece. you can watch it just as a film you know and maybe even be just following the narrative the plot to be entertained

or to hate it I don't know depends I mean but you can also try to explore it deeper to try to see what could be the symbolism behind the things because we have a lot of besides on the one hand being quite realistic and the acting of the characters being quite realistic we have a lot of surrealistic elements in the film. So shame for me is a very interesting feeling because I think it controls us a lot, even if we don't... Actually, nowadays we think that we are, and that's true, we are much more educated about how certain traumas or how certain things like shame can be damageable to us. So on one hand, we kind of know that this is not good, but on the other hand if you go and you are really open with yourself you don't lie to yourself first of all when you are with yourself then you really start to understand

how deep is all that and even if you don't Shem has so many different shapes I don't know it's a bit anecdotal I can give you an example I grew up in the environment as a small kid where everyone had blue eyes and I grew up in the environment where brown eyes were appreciated and until I don't know 30 years old I was thinking that okay if you have blue eyes you kind of didn't win in the lottery and that's it so even if I was never told that oh blue eyes are something bad or blue eyes are something not beautiful but there was always in the background oh look, your cousin has such a beautiful brown eyes and you have this context all the time and so, you know, it gets inside of you and even I couldn't say that I was ashamed of the blue eyes but I was always thinking, okay, blue eyes, you know

something is not interesting and so on so it's a certain form of a shame and then being 30 or 30 something I don't remember exactly when and I lived in India for half a year And suddenly I discovered that, oh, I have blue eyes and everyone liked it. Because people were coming to me on the street and saying, oh, but your eyes are so blue, it's so interesting. And suddenly I thought, I was so confused. So this is kind of anecdotal situation, shows how in this film, shame is not just a shame. It's something deeper, it's this voice from outside that comes into our heads and stays there. And then at some point, we forget where it's coming from, and we start to think it's our own voice. So at some point, I started to think that brown eyes are much more beautiful. And when I was very young, I was even thinking that, you know, when you look for the, I don't know, girlfriend or boyfriend, you are looking for someone with brown eyes color instead of blue eyes color.

So it's stupid, but this is how it eats us from inside, you know. So this film is about this type of shame, when something from outside becomes your own voice, and how you should deal with that, and how you should look for your original voice, which is still inside you, but you have to somehow undig it. So that's also the story of the main character. she's locked in the circle of her trauma which is repeating and repeating and repeating and the question in the film, one of the questions is if she's going to find a way out or not so this film is mostly about questioning her learning to ask the questions and also triggering the questions in the audience, so for me it's very important that the user audience after the film, they question they question the film

they question the position that they were put into the film they question the character because you know we put the user inside the main character so it's kind of maybe we try to say that this is the right perspective of seeing things but this is not what we are trying to say you should question this position you should doubt it You should ask who are these people, who are these teenagers. Maybe if you are interested, you can go and Google and find out more information about that. You should question yourself. So this is the point of the film. We are not providing any remedy. You won't find any information how to deal with such teenagers. We really try to avoid that. We really try to be open for the user to make their own decisions. the main thing for us is to trigger the questions in the user. Well, I have some questions. I said I have lots of questions about the piece.

So one of the questions I did have speaking around that we should question this or that, I think in pieces like this, one of the things that I am sensitive to is this phrase of nothing about us without us, this idea of, like, who is telling the story, at what point do they have access to what this experience is. And when I read that you were sort of one step removed from having observed it, it made me wonder to what degree are the stories and the images that we're seeing, are these being sourced from people that you are directly interacting with? Or I'm just trying to get a sense of the through line of this complex of stories. Or if we should just look at this as a metaphor that doesn't need to have like a tether to an authentic lived experience. So I guess that's a question I had in terms of trying to orient myself, because there's a lot of really intense imagery in this piece. And it feels like it's coming from, you know, a deep place of trauma. But also at the same time, you're speaking about a topic that is also one step removed. And so I'm just trying to get a sense of the relationality of how you navigated that and how you gathered those perspectives into what we're seeing.

when I was working on it generally it was I kind of felt that I'm having you know like in front of me I have a big piece big game, puzzle game you know like with many many little pieces that I gather it through lifetime since childhood I have this you know like kind of I do the game with myself I kind of have catalogs in my head I see people somehow I record the details I keep them it doesn't mean that they are present in the front all the time they disappear and then suddenly they appear so when I was working on Eyes of Shame I had the feeling that in front of me suddenly I have thousands and thousands of small pieces and I have to put them together so some of the pieces I guess this is what is your question about some of the pieces they were coming from the real life some dialogues are from the real life but in the end and I think this is very important to say

that this is a fantasy of the creators it's not a documentary it's not a recording of what was happening when I was volunteering in the hospital this is not documentation of that this is not a documentation of one certain person's story this is the fantasy of creators me, my co-author and then me as a director of course involving the graphic designer and the whole team but generally yes, it's a fantasy it's a fantasy, it's a metaphor with a lot of things, details pieces of puzzle coming from the reality, from the real stories mine, my co-authors some characters have real prototypes but this is not the story of a one person It's a mix of many things together. It's a fantasy.

Okay. Yeah, that's helpful to help Orient because it's a bit of a composite of your own experiences from what you observed. Are there any personal elements to the story or is this something that is also just more abstracted from what you observed? For me, everything is personal because, you know, as I mentioned in the beginning, I'm coming from theater and I'm trained and I'm used to, you know, I'm in my head before I start to work with animator and to misan-sign the character, you know, I act all of them in my head, you know, so it doesn't matter the gender, the age, anything. I kind of reach the point where they are all me, you know, or I am becoming them. So this is how you find the truth of behavior, of the tone, of what should be the facial expression, because I don't know many people who are not working in animation, they never think that actually the characters also act, and the animator is kind of an actor. So it's not just happening by itself, you know,

and especially in this piece or the pieces like this, there are like scenes which are very psychologically, they have like psychological basis. They are, I think, believable. I hope we can call them believable. So all the characters they are kind of coming from my head or they became I became them you know so yeah I don know I mean I probably I repeat some dialogues in my head until they feel natural until they feel coherent that's why for example I never close the script it's always open which is a bit annoying when you work with animation because any redoing is painful. But I still keep it open because suddenly you know, as an author on the paper I have these lines and they seem to be fine. But then when there is a real situation and the actors are giving their voices and you realize that no, this phrase is sounding very weird

and very artificial and we tried to reduce it as much as possible. So, yeah. Yeah. Well, it feels like I'm going through a bit of a fever dream. And so, you know, I had a lot of my own experiences that I want to dive into. But before I dig into more of the experience and how you designed it, I want to go back for a second for can you elaborate a little bit more of what motivated you to go volunteer with this population? I'm just trying to get a sense of your connection to this realm and story. And what what was the catalyst for you to first go and volunteer with these problematic teenagers? I don't know, I have kind of very concrete story about that but I'm not sure this is, maybe it's clear enough or maybe it's too personal there is no concrete, I hardly can explain it but I can give it at that point I was living in India and I was in New Delhi

and I wanted to see a certain shrine and I was there at the point where they do it every day they give away food for those who I need for food and I arrived to the point when this was happening and suddenly I you have kind of very different people coming for food it can be even the tourists you know who couldn't find the place to eat and they never reject it or the beggars or whomever. And suddenly in this crowd, I see a 32, 33 years old man. Actually, it's even difficult to describe it because he has no hands and no legs. So he's just rolling. His face is extremely beautiful. And you see that he probably was born healthy. and he was just given the metal plate on the floor

and he was trying to eat and the face was full of rice and I don't know, sorry, it still affects me anyways, sorry and he has no hands to clean it and I was thinking with all my complaints you know, my old complaints are nothing comparing to that you know, I'm coming from such a privileged background most of us are coming from such a privileged background and we complain, we are unhappy oh, the boat is standing too long in the heat, you know and oh, I don't know, there is no cold water or something when some people, they really have to struggle even to eat there's no one to clean the mouth from the leftovers you know because you don't have you don't have hands there is a further

story about that because there are certain castas in India and I suspect that he's coming from that background where parents treat their children in a certain way because they know that this way they will be more successful as beggars but I don't want to elaborate this because I don't have any proof for that. So it's my guessing. So I don't want to go into this, you know, with my guesses. And it's incorrect. Let's call it like that. So, you know, and all this story somehow, I don't know, I suddenly understood that actually I was given so much. And maybe I could give something back. And then back home I accidentally ended up in this institution because I was proposed to do the project. which I was doubting. I didn't see myself doing that. I mean, there's nothing wrong with the project. I didn't see myself. Can you elaborate? I missed the step there in terms of you were proposed to do a project and you ended up back home in Lithuania.

I suddenly, almost at the same time, I was approached to do the project, to do the film about a certain type of the clowns working with the hospitals. and I was like saying no I don't see myself in the clowns together but okay I can go and see how how is it working maybe there will be something I will be hooked on and maybe I will do something so of course I ended up not doing anything about the clowns but one of the places they were working in it was this institution which was dealing with problematic teenagers and back then the circumstances were much much worse and what struck me because they were so little financed so they were lacking any stuff and people wanting to work with them and for example one of the reasons why these kids were brought to these centers because they didn't know how to socialize properly most of them were coming from quite marginalized backgrounds so one of the reasons

for the center was to help them to learn to socialize but there were not enough people to do that so what they were doing for example for the leisure time there was one computer and 20 kids and each of them had like 20 minutes for the computer so while one was like playing stupid game with the computer the others were just gaping behind him you know and there was no one to bring to them something else and then i thought okay but this is actually what i could do because we do these workshops with animations you know okay this is not gonna help them or heal them or whatever but at least maybe it could be like i can create a few hours of different memories in their heads you know so they can start to think that life maybe it's not just you know gaping at the back of someone while your turn will come no so it's it's a long i mean there are many there were many many things related to that so there was a nurse from the staff who somehow we got

connection very soon and she tried hard to involve me and then somehow this was the point when i wanted to do some volunteering so i said okay this is a good opportunity so i will do that We are doing these workshops. I can do them here. And, yeah, that's how it started. Okay. Yeah, thanks for providing that extra context. Because I'm trying to wrap my head around the piece and understand the piece. And there's a certain level of intensity in the piece. It feels like being trapped within a nightmare type of scenario where there's a lot of sorrows and suffering. And, like, the piece around shame and feeling like you have different restrictions. And that you are embodying this character of Eilis. and that it feels like there's certain moments where you're asked to take actions or sometimes it feels like you're locked down, like you can't move your arms as much. And so I have this feeling of being restrained. And so it's like this psychiatric survivor type of mental health trauma situations that there's flashbacks between this mental health institution with scenes from home

with a mother who also seems to be having a bit of a mental breakdown and is having suicidal ideations and dies by suicide a couple of times. So there's just a lot of intensity of the piece that when I went through it, I just got this sense of this is like being trapped in a horror show, really laying on the intensity of some of these different situations. And so there's a lot of abstractions and other things that were kind of symbols that I didn't quite know how to read. But it sounds like from listening to what you've said so far was that there's a deliberate level of ambiguity where there may not be necessarily a clear thing to read, but it's kind of left with my emotion around it. So my emotion I'm left with is sort of like this anxiety and feeling like I'm restrained and trapped and dealing with a bit of psychological terror and trauma and lots of suffering and sorrows. You are pushed to the point where you are supposed to want to escape it, you know, to want to find the way out of that.

This was also one of the aims because even if I'm very happy what you are mentioning because for me, you know, it's a very fresh piece. We just finished it and we have this premiere. So for me, any impressions are very valuable. So one of the things which we were working on is this embodiment. And in the beginning of the movie, your hands are quite free and your avatar's hands are quite free. You can move them and you are kind of told or forced to do certain things. you can try to do them and then through the movie you are your hands are more and more restricted are more and more restricted there are scenes when for example you are told to take egg and eat it and even if you try you might not try it's calculated that there are different scenarios but if you try you if you try i don't know you see your hands your fingers go crazy you know they don't really touch they behave very weirdly and they go back to the initial position like kind of transform into like these wiggly worms that were kind of floating in a way that looked like seaweed floating in the sea so it just had this disillusion of the bone structure to kind of just

float around and be a little bit floppy when you're asked to pick up something and you try to pick it up but your hands are immobilized so another way of creating this kind of restraint exactly and it also plays with many things it plays along the idea of anorixia because when you have this even And if you want to eat, you can't eat. So you know it can be read as a symbol. Your hands, you try to pick up the egg, but your hands are not really picking up the egg. And also it's about your feeling being trapped, as you described it. And you are told to do certain things, but you are not doing them or you can't do them even if you want to do them. And towards the end of the movie, you probably, if you look at your hands, your avatar's hands, you see that you are totally restricted. Generally, your hands are having restraints with which your avatar's hands are tied to the wheelchair handles, so you know. Because the idea is that she, the main character, she's not hearing the shadow.

Let's use this Jungian. In English, you pronounce it Jungian. Jungian or Jungian, yeah. Jungian, Jungian idea. I mean, shadow is not just something bad. It's something that pushes that move forward. So she's pushed. She's not hearing that. She's not listening. She's still trapped. So she has to move and find the way out. So since she's not doing anything, she's more and more trapped, more and more restricted. And in the end, the question is, if she's getting out. And at what cost? and if it's possible to get out because healing from trauma is not that easy you know even with all the remedies with all the professional help it's not that easy it takes time it's a long process yeah there's a couple other motifs I wanted to recapture from my own memory of the piece and ask you about if you have any comments

so there's kind of an ongoing conceit where you're often looking into mirrors and you see yourself But sometimes when you're looking in the mirror, you see other characters that are in the scene like behind you. But when you turn around, they're not actually there. And so there's this what's truth, what's reality. And I don't know if that's like a depiction of schizophrenia or if it's also like more of the memories of something that happened in the past that she's remembering. But we're in a moment. So I had a little trouble understanding and reading what was happening with these kind of dual realities that we have. It's like a split reality that I'm put into. And it's like a fragmentation that's a part of the experience of this type of mental health. But yeah just curious if you have any other comments on that Both things what you are saying are truths because our character has inclination for schizophrenia That one thing Because her mother in our story commits suicide because she was schizophrenic. But we do not really say that. I didn't want to say that because it's not needed. It's a secondary thing and it's not a medical piece. It's not an analysis of

schizophrenia or nothing like that. So yes, that's truth. also when it comes to these split realities of what I see in the mirrors because we have a lot of mirrors in the piece and we play a lot with that because sometimes what you see it's reflections but at some point this reflection suddenly starts to behave on its own so generally you should be, as a user, you should follow the details and if you are following it you will probably might recognize, for example that this kind of teddy bear octopus character has the same color as, for example, the hair of the main character. And then it comes out inside the main character. So it's kind of the extension of her. She had to face this situation as a very small kid. As a very small kid, you can't deal with such traumatic experiences like your mother committing suicide in front of you.

So to survive it, you have to find the way in your head, you have to find the way to get away from that. So the idea for her is that she created this powerful, huge, octopus-alike, Teddy Bear character. When she is not able to bear the situation in reality, she just, in her head, becomes him. he is so strong he can do things she can't do things so that's how she was surviving as a small kid but the question is is it still working because she's not a small kid at the moment of the film she's 14 years old so sometimes what was helping us some years ago might be turning against us now so that's why for example this character sometimes it looks like it's not her extension sometimes it looks like it's also trying to hurt her but the idea behind

that is maybe it's time for her to move on and to understand that this is not anymore something she can use there is a time to go further yeah yeah i really liked how there was the introduction of the a eyeless present-day age teenager or so, and then that you'd be sitting there and kind of walking outside of the body would almost be like a part of yourself from the past. Your childhood self kind of just emerges out of your body, which is kind of a surreal feeling in the sense that, you know, when I'm watching a film, I'm dissociated and I'm just watching it, but to kind of have the experience of something popping out of my body was a bit surreal in the sense of, like, I haven't seen many other people do that, but I thought it was a really nice and elegant way of communicating that this is like the seven-year-old version of Eyeless who's like coming out and being able to be a little bit more of a, you can observe the past through like more of a third-person omniscient perspective

rather than the first-person perspective. So you get some distance of kind of reevaluating different things that happened in the past, especially with her mother. So, yeah, I don't know if you have any comments on this way that you're playing with perspective of sometimes you're inside, I listen sometimes out, but sometimes you also have the younger aspects of Ilus coming out and being depicted as a character, so you're watching your younger self play out a scene. Yes, that was the main thing for me, having this in VR, because, you know, on the flat screen, you can't really experiment with that. For me, this was a very interesting thing to try to change the positions of the user, because in our, actually initially it had to be even more different, we planned initially more different changes for the user position but then the film was becoming already quite complex and quite condensed as you mentioned yourself and in the end it's just I didn't want it to

I didn't want to overdo with that so we initially decided okay let's stick with mostly two concrete positions user is inside eyeless or outside and observing her from a side and since this piece is one i hope but initially it was the idea like we will have trilogy of vr pieces then this is the first part of it i don't know if we managed financially to support the other two but this is the idea that i'm planning to develop further in the other pieces to to play with the user position even more because there are many many other angles that would be interesting to explore like i don't know why not use that to become mother at some point yeah and the piece is called eyes of shame and there's a scene where you're in the bathroom and maybe a school or something and like you start to see these other girls come in and eventually they start bullying eyeless and then

up to a certain point when there is these two floating eyes that come in and you know the piece is called eyes of shame and so i get this ominous feel of like a little bit of big brother but also like a threat of something that doesn't feel safe to have these kind of floating eyes staring at you and so yeah just curious to hear any other reflections on this experience of shame where shame is usually you're looking at yourself or maybe you're projecting of other people looking at you and imagining what they're thinking but that often shame is coming from an internal dialogue rather than from external and so there's an externalization of something that's usually an internal process and so yeah i just was wondering if you had any other comments on the role of the eyes that are kind of motifs that are coming out and other scenes as well but the bathroom scene was one that was popping up as particularly visceral because it's just after she's being bullied and confronted by these other younger girls even as you say even if it's internal process still very often this internal is related to external things you know and how we are seen

by the others so generally person who lives in shame it's like someone who is observed by thousands and thousands of eyes and wherever you go you can't get rid of them they are always with you in your head and yes it's internally but also it comes from the exterior because initially it's coming from outside initially it's kind of someone said something about you or you think because your family told you no you should respect your neighbors so you think oh no I have to do this I don't want to do this, but I have to do this because what neighbors will think and so you know, it's so these eyes are kind of I was looking for the expression you know, in the movie you have to find concrete expression form so this is at some point I saw like the graphic the picture, but there is

simple one from middle ages and it was called universe of the eyes and suddenly I understood, but this is how you feel as a person in shame. No, you are always observed, but you are surrounded by this universe of the eyes. They are looking at you. The gaze is cold. As you know, there are no emotions. They are just looking at you, and you are putting the emotions into them. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Well, I guess as we start to wrap up, I'd love to hear some of your thoughts on what you think the ultimate potential of immersive storytelling and this type of embodied storytelling that you're doing, what the ultimate potential of that might be and what it might be able to enable. You mean for this concretely piece or in general? Just in general, yeah. Just where do you see this type of immersive storytelling, what it might be able to enable here in the future? you know it's difficult to say because like five years ago i just had this discussion you like you

know like about the hand tracking for example like five six seven years ago hand tracking if you were thinking about it you were thinking oh no kind of interesting idea but not really working and like two years ago appeared pieces with you don't need any controllers and hand tracking is working perfectly well so you know it's evolving a lot i think from my point of view this media is very interesting and the biggest challenge is still the you know the eliteness of it that in terms of that not everyone is able just to buy the headset to or the to buy this certain type of computer if you want to see it as a pc vr you know so it's is that but as the form of expression I find it very interesting I find it just as I hope that the equipment will get simpler cheaper and easier to use and

then it's just gonna evolve and evolve and we will be able to you know see more and more interesting pieces because I think we can express with it more something that's not possible to express on the flat screen or in the painting, you know. Awesome. Is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the broader immersive community? Question everything. Everything should be questioned. The film, Eyes of Shame, the character, you shouldn't believe her perspective if you manage to watch it. You should question it. How much is truth? How much is truth in this version that the creators are presenting? How much is truth in your voice that you have in your head? And yeah, everything should be questioned. This is how we move on. awesome well i enjoyed questioning you about the eyes of shame because i had lots of questions and

yeah i think it's a provocative intense piece uh you know certainly a lot of depictions of these traumatic scenes and you do feel a bit constrained and restrained and it's for me it's interesting to see the use of virtual reality in terms of embodiment and having a body and being a character like being the main protagonist character and being obstinate not eating but also having my movements slowly over time be more and more restrained, but also for you trying to create this feeling of being trapped. I think that's really quite effective to have different levels of embodiment that you're moving. And even there's a mechanic of you trying to push a button to turn off the light to kind of progress. And you're constantly being thwarted when you try to do that. So there's lots of different little ways that you're limiting subtly the agency as people are going through the piece. But yeah, it's just this reflection of the role of embodiment in immersive storytelling. And I think this is a good example of seeing what kind of things you can start to do with telling a story in that way. So thanks again for joining me here on the podcast to help break it all down. Thank you very much for questioning.

It's always interesting to answer the question. Thanks a lot. Thanks so much for listening to the Voices of VR podcast. And I just want to say that I'm really trying to live into the transformation economy, meaning I want to give away all this information for free, make it publicly accessible for not only you, but the entire community. And if you find value in that, then please do consider supporting me on Patreon. I'm on this journey of trying to reach my 1,000 true fans. And if I have just $5 a month from that 1,000, I'll be in a much more solid and stable financial position. So I really need your help to be able to get to that point. So if you enjoy what I'm doing here at the Voices of VR podcast, then please do consider supporting me at patreon.com slash Voices of VR. Thanks for listening. Thank you.