Name: Akvil Sakhare

Guide: Prof. Jayesh Pillai

Course: Interaction

Credits: Music by Nilesh Jatwa, Shot with Elysian Experience Studio

The Allegory: Virtual Reality experience of the journey from the Allegory of Cave

The Allegory of the Cave describes a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them, and give names to these shadows. The shadows are the prisoner’s reality. One of the prisoners escapes the reality of the cave and witnesses the reality outside. He begins to understand his new world, and sees that the sun is the source of life and goes on an intellectual journey where he discovers beauty and meaning. This project is focused on creating a version of the journey of this story in virtual reality and proposes retelling of the story in a subjective manner so that the person experiencing it feels like he is going through the events in the story.

The Allegory is a subjective experience of the Allegory of the Cave described by Plato. Using the medium of virtual reality (VR), you take a journey as the prisoner who leaves the cave and witnesses different realities. Represented as series of events that occur in journey, the experience tries to convey how the faculty of human perception matures.
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d6QzzI08_0

Storyboard showing different events.

Final Design of the experience based on the mind game with four levels of reality.

Evaluation was done using Samsung’s Gear VR by Think Aloud test and other contextual tasks.