Eidolon360 is an immersive Virtual Reality (VR) film experience for the GearVR headset, exploring the relationship between the body and technology, and the effect technology has on our perception of what it means to be human and alive.

Year: 2017
Exhibitions: ‘Interactions Gallery’, British HCI, University of Sunderland (2017); ‘xCoAx 2018’, Museo del Plaje, Madrid, Spain (2018); ‘TEI 2018’ (Twelfth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interactions), Stockholm Kulturhuser, Stockholm, Sweden (2018)

VR film documentation: Low-res VR film (for Cardboard VR Viewer)
Duration: 06:25mins

The Eidolon360 artwork is presented as either a VR lounge experience or as an exhibition installation, where the viewer reclines on a hospital bed and wearing a VR headset, experiences a 360 immersive film. The viewer inhabits the point of view of resuscitation manikin Resusci Anne, lying on a hospital bed within a medical simulation centre’s resuscitation training room. A medic (actress Pauline Goldsmith) approaches the viewer and tenderly recounts the origin story of simulated CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation). This is an intriguing tale of a mysterious drowned young woman, found in Paris in the late 1880’s, who became the face of CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation), Resusci Anne, and has since been revived by over 300 million people worldwide. Eidolon360 presents an emotionally resonant anecdote, as an empathic immersive experience, scrutinizing the overlaps between real life and simulation.

Eidolon360 was created in collaboration with creative technologist Tom Flint and developed at the Scottish Centre for Simulation & Clinical Human Factors (SCSCHF) at the Forth Valley Royal Hospital, Larbert.

Credits: Tom Flint (360 filming and post-processing), Pauline Goldsmith (actor), George Mikrogiannakis (sound design)

Funded by: Wellcome Trust Arts Award, Creative Scotland, The University of Edinburgh and Edinburgh Napier University

Photography by: Beverley Hood and Tom Flint