Rapid Transit: Preface functions as a prelude to Rapid Transit, an ambitious virtual reality installation set in a futuristic New York City currently under development. This linear, non-interactive experience was created by Victor Morales and his team – Daniel Dobson (music), William Burns (screenplay), Modesto Jimenez, and Christine Schisano (voice over) – as a standalone project. Both were developed with the Unreal Engine 4, one of the most popular tools for game development.
The action takes place in the train car of a New York City subway that does not look significantly different from the existing MTA service, with one caveat: most passengers wear virtual reality/augmented reality displays – called BandanaX in the original script – that project images directly onto their retinas. The travellers do not interact with each other: they are alone, together. In the video below, featuring a sound design by Don Dobson, passengers are “trippin’ on lerks” .
These test videos showcase Morales’s modus operandi. In the example below, different loops are played at different times. Parameters such as the duration of camera movements, character animation, voice and real time manipulation are modified on the fly by Morales, who describes the process as “an improvisation that generates different meanings (?) at every pass”. Here Christine Schisano reads “To Roosevelt” (1903), a poem by Félix Rubén García Sarmiento, known as Rubén Darío (1867-1916), a Nicaraguan poet who initiated the Spanish-American literary movement known as modernismo that flourished at the end of the 19th century. Here’s a passage:
You are the United States,
You are the future invader
the naive America who has Indian blood,
that still prays to Jesus Christ and still speaks Spanish.
An actor, puppet artist, writer and comedian, Schisano was born in San Jose, California and now lives in New York City. She received a BA in Acting from Sonoma State University and works with puppetry, music, movement, and video.
In another improvisational cut scene which was eventually incorporated in Rapid Transit: Preface, the character’s rant is dubbed by Modesto “Flako” Jimenez. The original text is by William Burns. Jimenez is a Dominican-born actor, writer and arts educator raised in Brooklyn who co-founded Real People Theater, a company best known for reworking plays by combining some of the language of the original texts with street slang and Spanish. As Morales explains, this ranting style is “part of the process as the scenes are recorded live. The actor/avatar is in a loop, which is also the kind of repetitiveness typical of mental illness, which sadly, is a condition that abounds in the NYC subway.”
In the videos below, both titled Summer of Struggle, Morales presents another glimpse of the futuristic subway ride, while Memphis Slim plays a medley of Nervous/Summertime (right, square format). The second example features more experimental beats (left, horizontal format).
While riding the subway, travellers are lost in their mediated fantasies. Technologies of isolation have always existed – from books to personal stereos – but in the future we will carry our wearable filter bubbles everywhere, Morales predicts. In a sense, passengers are simultaneously travelling physically and virtually, experiencing the ultimate displacement. Their bodies are distorted, their poses unnatural. Reality and virtual reality converge and collapse into each other.
This final example shows the process of moving the virtual camera inside the subway car. A long pan shows the travelers as they experience various kinds of content through their devices. It’s going to be a long ride.
Morales is currently developing Rapid Transit as a virtual reality installation, with the goal of completing the project by the Fall. Below is a screen-capture of the VR teaser. (Matteo Bittanti)
Rapid Transit: Preface was exhibited on VRAL between April 25 - May 7 2020.
