Ascension

In English

Ascension is a VR installation created by Paul Boereboom and Leon Rogissart that extends the borders of opera and the way we look at reality.

Ascension won best VR-production during KABOOM Animation festival 2021.

Ascension started from the concept of a sensory deprivation tank: a saltwater floating pool in which you receive no stimulus, allowing your mind to unwind. You experience weightlessness, which is essential in order to reconnect with the self. This concept evolved into a VR experience in which Boereboom and Rogissart set out to find a balance between the heart and the head. 

How do we achieve this balance? How do these two interact with each other?

With Ascension, the artists create a space to answer those questions, offering a canvas on which the visitors may reflect and associate for themselves. A place where we are invited to briefly let go of the demands of our physical bodies and the outside world and are allowed to just exist in the moment. The VR experience releases you from time and space through a delicate combination of images and opera music. Afterwards you will be gently taken out of the artificial world and brought back to reality.

There will be use of smoke and stroboscopic light.