*Team project developed with Francisco Navas and Tatiana Trebisacci at NYU ITP.

Gene’s Place: A roomscale VR experience exploring the use of space as a narrative driver

Gene is part of a generation that lived through the AIDS epidemic in New York City. After his partner John died of AIDS in the early 90s, Gene started collecting art in the loft they shared. Gene's Place is a magical space, part art gallery and part sanctuary, memorializing the lives lost to AIDS. In this experience, visitors explore Gene's 2,000 sq. ft. loft in downtown Manhattan, interact with the art, and listen to Gene's stories from almost five decades of living in New York City.

“Gene Fedorko participated in his first Civil Rights protest in 1963. In the early 1980s, he co-founded HEAL, a grass-roots community-based organization that served free vegetarian and macrobiotic meals to people sick with AIDS and was an ardent member of AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), an international, grassroots political group working to end the AIDS pandemic. He is a medical professional, caregiver, art collector, curator, sexual explorer and Downtown New York fixture. He has kept a meticulous list, THE BOOK OF THE DEAD, of his loved ones, friends, acquaintances, comrades, who have died of AIDS over the decades, with approximately 1,100 names on it.”

Source: The LGBTQ History Project

Process

To create a photogrammetry model of Gene's loft, our team built a camera rig using three Canon 5Ds mounted on a wheeled stand. After conducting several test scans of portions of Gene's loft, we did a final scan with roughly 2,000 photographs. We reconstructed these images into a 3D model using Reality Capture, then optimized the model before importing it into Unreal Engine. In Unreal Engine, we matched the virtual and real dimensions of the loft. This step is necessary to ensure the space feels real when exploring it in VR.

Testing the experience

We first presented the experience at NYU's 370 Jay St Media Commons in a space that nearly matched the dimensions of Gene's apartment and maxed out the Quest 2's roomscale play area. Due to technical and time constraints, the headset had to be tethered to a laptop with the longest cable we could find.

At ITP's 2022 Winter Show, we had a smaller space available, but it was enough to give visitors a taste of Gene's Place. Gene himself attended the show and was delighted to see his apartment in VR.