Good Girl VR: straddling installation art, performance art, and identity politics with a virtual environment

Good Girl is a mixed reality installation highlighting the negotiated relationships within Tonia’s intersectional existence. The piece involves a VR art installation set in an alternate reality where the artist is in a comatose state. Participants visit Good Girl Labs, a laboratory run by the artist’s followers to study the artist’s body. In Good Girl Labs, visitors are guided by a lab technician to connect to the artist’s subconscious where they can encounter a series of dynamic personas representing a relational map of the social, political, and economic layers of the artist’s American’t life as a queer first generation child of Middle Eastern immigrants raised digital. This paper proposes Good Girl VR as one example to think about how VR can be used in reference to installation and performance art and how such an elite medium can be used to illustrate paraspatial realities and counter-narratives. ❧ To experiment towards our innovative design goals, we crack at a tough pipeline: mixing live action stereo captures, with 3d composited environments, played back in real time. Assessing the technical challenges at play for theoretical innovation was a humbling practical approach to design research.《佳偶》（Good Girl）是一件混合现实（Mixed Reality）装置艺术作品，聚焦展现托尼娅（Tonia）在交叉身份处境中经多方协商构建的各类社会关系。该作品包含一处搭建于虚构现实中的虚拟现实（Virtual Reality）艺术装置，其背景设定为艺术家陷入昏迷状态。参与者将造访《佳偶》实验室（Good Girl Labs）——这一实验室由艺术家的追随者运营，用于研究艺术家的身体状态。在《佳偶》实验室中，参观者将在实验室技术员的引导下接入艺术家的潜意识空间，在此邂逅一系列动态人格形象，这些形象构成了一张关系图谱，映射出艺术家作为酷儿（Queer）第一代中东移民子女、在数字环境中成长的社会、政治与经济维度下的美式违和（American’t）生活。本文以《佳偶》VR（Good Girl VR）为案例，探讨虚拟现实技术如何应用于装置与行为艺术，以及这类精英媒介如何用于阐释超空间现实与反叙事。 ❧ 为达成我们的创新设计目标，我们攻克了一项极具挑战性的技术流程管线难题：将实拍立体采集画面与三维（3D）合成环境进行融合，并实现实时回放。针对理论创新过程中存在的技术挑战进行评估，为设计研究带来了一种谦逊务实的实践路径。