Mixing Crowd

My thesis emphasizes thinking about design questions in the context of using a mixture of emerging “alternative reality” technologies, which include VR, AR, and mixed reality. This project, as a small piece of the concept of alternative reality, is a series of studies on different qualities and notions around how the crowd mix together in a world where they can exist in various forms.

The study is comprised of three parts: The Crowd Simulation, the Crowd Collage and the Experiential Prototype.

I first started out with crowd simulation, exploring how the crowd is navigated differently according to different content they see through alternative reality device.

The reason why I got interested in the crowd simulation was because I believe the collective experience of the crowd in a world where alternative reality becomes ubiquitous will be a significant aspect of this field for us designers, developers and makers to explore.

In my opinion, the alternative reality doesn’t exclude the default reality. By default reality, I mean the reality that people experience without the helps of any other alternate reality tools, such as social media, video games, VR/AR headset, etc. The alternative reality is always related to the default reality.