NYMPHS - VR REQUIEM : An animated theatrical art-installation performed by ACTROIDS (monumental art dolls) - an immersive VR experience.
NYMPHS is an ode to those of who have experienced true love. Here they become Nymphs in an amorous yet lethal underwater dream. The performance is a poetic study for the VR stage examining the insanity and beauty of love. We flow through two dimensions: the sacral reality, where motives are set up in an anatomical theatre, while imaginary creatures from legends take us into a scenic dream, “far out in the ocean, where the water is as blue as the prettiest cornflower, as clear as crystal….”
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Nymphs is a work of art that dissolves the boundary between sublime love and clinical delirium.
A true theatrical piece must unveil the naked truth, reveal living beauty, become an ode to life. In Nymphs, I craft a requiem - a sacred theatre piece for victims of „lethal love“, portrayed as monumental art-dolls. I call them Nymphs. These art dolls possess a certain magic, as if they carry within them the distant echo of ancient, majestic goddesses - ethereal beings, pure and transcendent, resurrected by the force of true love.
To all those wondrous souls who transcended death through love - I devote this piece.
The dramaturgical form unfolds as a collage of audio‑visual tableaux, where the drama evokes powerful visual poetry rather than a linear narrative. The play is a post-mortem elegy for the stage, oscillating between clinical despair and mystical transcendence. The piece performs an AUTOPSY OF THE PSYCHE - a lyrical study of love's grandeur and its descent into madness. On one hand, it realigns and humanizes mythological heroes by presenting them as true beings - naked, shattered, mad. On the other hand, it poses a philosophical concept: some humans sense so deeply that they have no place on earth - they deserve glorification; by embracing death, they transcend it. Should we see these beings as tragic exhibits of pathological mental disorder? Or ought we revere them as divine saints of sorrow - deified lovers whose death is a sublime metamorphosis?
The viewer traverses two parallel dimensions: the Dramatic Reality - a stark, clinical space echoing the Theatrum Anatomicum, where love's remnants are laid bare upon the marble of inquiry; the other dimension descends into the Realm of Dreams - a pictorial fantasy inspired by ancient myths and fairy tales, dreamlike in serenity and devastating in beauty. Here, water-nymphs drift through the abyss, “far out in the ocean, where the water is as blue as the prettiest cornflower, as clear as crystal…”.
In this Virtual Reality REQUIEM, beauty and sorrow entwine in sublime embrace - and love overcomes death.
Nymphs is a Virtual Reality theatrical experience, performed by Actroids (programmed, monumental fine-art-dolls). The artwork aims to stand as a visionary embodiment of Edward Gordon Craig’s "Über-Marionette" manifesto of 1907, reimagined through the lens of 21st-century technology.
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The project is currently under development. It is intended to be conceived, produced, and presented at VRium ArtSpace - a dedicated VR performing arts center available as a standalone app.
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Awards:
Discovery Award | Raindance Immersive 2021
Best Virtual Reality Short | Cannes Film Festival| (monthly competition, October 2022)
Honorable Mention | British Indie Festival Film & Music 2023
Credits:
Produced by VRium Creative Team and VenusSX
Narrative, Art Direction & Graphic Design : ShuShuVR
Shaders Art : Niko Lang
Artistic collaboration : The Popovy Sisters, Libera.
Music by: Igor Korzhov
Presented:
Bright Festival 2025
Immersive X 2024
Cannes Film Festival 2022
Raindance Immersive 2021
VR World link : https://vrchat.com/home/world/wrld_0f71bc77-ca70-4c71-8e07-066152f0d05a
To review the artwork in VR please contact the author (shushuvrart@gmail,com)
