PH706 : Immersive Virtual Club
PH706 is an immersive and narrative-driven virtual club that invites users to experience raves and parties beyond their immediate physical realms.
In a context where the world is affected by Covid-19, social gatherings and other entertainment venues are shut down to ensure the safety of each other. Even if the restrictions are eased due to the decline of the number of spread, clubs and other larger gatherings won’t emerge back into our lives for a long while. The experience of clubbing, which for many is a way of freeing themselves from their weekly routines, is now inaccessible, just when routines are practically unavoidable and “every day suddenly feels the same”. Due to prolonged isolation, people long to escape.
Within this context, PH706 was born driven by escapism, and how it would allow people to get away to experience an alternative reality. The multi-coloured lights, vibrations of the bass, and almost hypnotic dance moves drove us towards the center of the nightlife of all cities, raves.
Our neon-lit world of bots wants us to free ourselves and break our routine for a while.
Link to experience
Video Made with Unreal Engine & Cinema 4D
Story
In a neon-lit dystopian world where humanoid robots known as Neo-bots are isolated and suspended in water tanks due to the spread of a new kind of virus that was causing them to malfunction.
In the year PH706, After four decades, the virus declines and Neobots break out of their glass tanks to reunite and celebrate their new-found freedom.
Experience
Users can enter the VR experience using their laptops or VR goggles. Users are first invited to enter the experience through our website with a video that narrates the story of the Neobots after which you enter an interactive party space called the PH706. Each room inside the experience consists of a different musical set created by us. Space makes use of positional audio to not only experience the music through navigation but also to communicate with other users inside the platform. So far my team and I have thrown up to 6 to 7 Virtual parties inside our platform and have received remarkable feedback.
Screen recording of the experience
Post party story
In this part of the experience, we want our audience to feel the freedom after isolation but also more importantly the connection with others. As some of us had experience of estrangement and distance with other people in the society because of the Covid-19. The last shot is where the biggest difference between onboarding and offboarding video. The idea is to create the feeling of we’re never separated from each other, and the emotion of unity. The offboarding video also changes the colour tune as it became a history, we add a layer of old film style to it.
Video Made with Unreal Engine & Cinema 4D