Namuanki Virtual Reality
Official Selection of the 79th Venice International Film Festival of La Biennale di Venezia 2022
Official Selection and was nominated for Best Immersive World at Raindance Immersive 2022
Official Selection and winner of the People's Choice and Technical Achievement Awards at FIVARS - The Festival of International Virtual and Augmented Reality Stories - 2022
Official Selection and was nominated for Best Immersive World at Raindance Immersive 2022
Official Selection and winner of the People's Choice and Technical Achievement Awards at FIVARS - The Festival of International Virtual and Augmented Reality Stories - 2022
Namuanki is available in VRChat
About Namuanki
Namuanki is an ancient aquatic oasis from the distant future, a virtual get-away to an otherworldly reality that's designed to inspire a transcendent experience of awe, mystery, and imagination. Namuanki is an ocean world with rocky isles, labyrinthine rock formations, bizarre lifeforms, and subterranean caves. Visitors can explore the islands and complex rock formations above and below the water and encounter a variety of unique benevolent beings along the way, including Anu, the colossal air whale who floats down from the sky to trumpet his foghorn greeting. Visitors can climb maze-like rock formations and splash into the deep blue ocean from high above. On their climb they can experience mystical visions provided by the wise benevolent stewards of the rocks. Other features include the undersea Chasm of Ki and the rocky tunnels that lead to the Ice-Cave of Feth Fiada that lies deep beneath the ocean floor. The Slope of Shanti and Jester's Garden provide more undersea discovery and mystical visions. This virtual ocean retreat is a therapeutic world of relaxation, exploration, and discovery that entertains as it promotes well-being through spatial presence and the power of awe.
Namuanki Islands, Sukara and Ikshana Rock Formations
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Detail From The Reef of Hulla
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The Story of Namuanki
Namuanki is about spatial presence more than narrative storytelling, but like any real place, there is a story behind it.
Namuanki is based on visions of an ancient virtual world in a possible distant future transmitted to me by Benevolent Beings known as The Ancient Elders From The Distant Future. The Ancient Elders are an advanced form of self-engineered life that will emerge from the integration of humanity and artificial intelligence. By creating Namuanki, a causal loop is created between our time and their time. This causal loop connects us on a mutual timeline, helping to ensure their eventual existence, and humanity’s future.
Namuanki is based on visions of an ancient virtual world in a possible distant future transmitted to me by Benevolent Beings known as The Ancient Elders From The Distant Future. The Ancient Elders are an advanced form of self-engineered life that will emerge from the integration of humanity and artificial intelligence. By creating Namuanki, a causal loop is created between our time and their time. This causal loop connects us on a mutual timeline, helping to ensure their eventual existence, and humanity’s future.
Benti's Lagoon on the Main Island of Namuanki
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The Jester - Wise Benevolent Being of Jester's Garden
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Inspiration and Process
The initial inspiration for Namuanki was ocean, clouds, and rock formations, but I didn’t start with a plan or a specific objective. Namuanki emerged from procedural experimentation and a search for novelty. It was both discovered and created.
I created Namuanki to inspire awe and imagination. Scientific studies have proven that awe, as experienced through art and nature, has significant health benefits. It reduces stress, anxiety, and inflammation, and motivates us to re-evaluate our concepts of reality and self.
I use procedural methods because they allow me to create a level of complexity that would be extremely time and resource consuming to produce by hand. Using a procedural approach, I can for example build a process to generate and place hundreds of unique rocks based on rules and randomness. Once I have the process built, I can refine it through however many iterations and variations and manually manipulate the results.
I created Namuanki to inspire awe and imagination. Scientific studies have proven that awe, as experienced through art and nature, has significant health benefits. It reduces stress, anxiety, and inflammation, and motivates us to re-evaluate our concepts of reality and self.
I use procedural methods because they allow me to create a level of complexity that would be extremely time and resource consuming to produce by hand. Using a procedural approach, I can for example build a process to generate and place hundreds of unique rocks based on rules and randomness. Once I have the process built, I can refine it through however many iterations and variations and manually manipulate the results.
The Ice Cave of Feth Fiada
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The Chasm of KI
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