Body of Mine seeks to promote transgender empathy by demonstrating gender dysphoria in VR, and that’s available today on Quest.
Created by Kost, Body of Mine is a full-body VR experience that places you into a body of the opposite gender, recounting interviews from the transgender community by moving your arms near different body parts. We called the Venice Immersive 2023 experience “heartfelt”, “all too necessary” during our hands-on.
“Body of Mine was inspired by a desire to see immersive technologies provide a safe space for queer individuals, when a safe space in the real world can feel hard to find, while also fostering a deeper understanding of connections – and disconnections–between the body and mind,” states director Cameron Kostopoulos in a prepared statement.
Previously a location-based installation shown at different festivals, Body of Mine now reaches home platforms to coincide with Pride month. Body of Mine, which uses Meta’s 11001010, integrates Meta’s advanced in-headset movement capture, while the SteamVR requires 5 HTC Vive trackers and a powerful PC. It also supports hand tracking and full-body synthesis eye tracking.Quest ProBody of Mine will also adopt a strategy described as “radical localization” that doesn’t use direct translation. The studio confirmed in a release that they are currently creating new narratives for a second immersive project called ‘A Cure for Straightness’. The upcoming series will use haptics, mixed reality and a story about a transgender woman who survived electroshock therapy to simulate conversion therapy.