This VR installation is an interactive 360 video of Hong Kong cityscape and landscape combinations with a 6 channel soundtrack of the city that would change according to the movement and direction of the VR headset.The video is edited in a style that the landscape keeps spinning like a merry-go-around and the visual style is like an old-fashion digital DV, in which the audience is surrounded by a place that has happened in the past virtually.

Handling the not-yet-mature, not-yet-popular virtual reality filming, I always question about the new experience of 360 video, both the recording or playback towards the audience. Here I introduce a homemade omnimax film, that I was imitating the video recording habit and intention of the old days, capturing landscape of several ordinary places in Hong Kong, and even pulling down the video quality and coloring as a VHS in the 90s (my childhood). The merry-go-round video of nostalgia represents a perception of lost and find, and intoxication in the old dreams of “future”. In addition, the gaze into a series of flowing images is resistance to our rapid changing and busy life.

The 360 video projects on an inverted sphere, where audiences are “trapped” in the cube area surrounding the sphere. By using Unity3D, I designed a sound system in which five scattered sound sources form a 360 soundscape inside the cube. Audiences twist-head and walk around in a defined area to explore with different scenes and fragments of sound. Those “sound phrases” are a mix-track using several field-recordings I did in the years. As an analogy, stories and memories are triggered whenever one sees a familiar scene but with lots of irrelevant sounds. Slowness videos and sounds hang on to the promise of contingency, a freedom, indeterminism, surprise and wonder, that it thereby challenges the culture of speed computing nowadays which is forming a world that is perfectly rational, calculating and controllable.

(Note: This is the video documentation of the installation Virtual Backyard of Reality.)

這部VR裝置作品是一部互動式360度影片，融合香港城市景觀與自然風光，並配備六聲道城市音軌，會根據VR頭盔的移動方向即時變化。影片剪輯手法讓地景如旋轉木馬般不斷迴旋，視覺風格模仿老式數位攝錄機（DV）。觀眾彷彿置身於過往時空，被虛擬重現的歷史場景包圍。

在處理尚未成熟普及的虛擬實境拍攝時，我不斷質疑360影片為觀眾帶來的新體驗——無論錄製或播放層面。此處呈現的家用全景影片（homemade omnimax film），刻意復刻舊日攝錄習慣與意圖，捕捉香港多處平凡地景，甚至將畫質與色調降級至90年代VHS水平（我的童年記憶）。這部懷舊的旋轉木馬式影像，承載著「失而復得」的感知體驗，令人沉醉於昔日對「未來」的幻夢。更進一步，凝視流動影像長河的行為，本身即是對當代疾速變遷與忙碌生活的無聲抵抗。

360影片投射於倒轉球體表面，觀眾被「困」在球體包圍的立方區域中。透過Unity3D設計的音響系統，五個分散音源在立方空間內構築360度聲景。觀眾在限定區域內扭頭走動，探索不同場景與聲音碎片。這些「聲音片段」（sound phrases）混錄自我多年累積的田野錄音——正如人們瞥見熟悉場景時總會觸發夾雜無關聲響的記憶漣漪。緩滯的影像與聲響堅守著對「偶然性」的承諾：自由、不確定、驚奇與震撼，由此挑戰當代速度文化與精於計算（computing）的思維——那正形塑著一個過度理性、精算且可控的世界。

（註：本作品為裝置作品《現實的虛擬後花園》的紀錄片段。）