# Remember!

## VR as a vessel to explore memories

Alma Oskouei*
Artist
Rennes, France

Ronan Gaugne†
Univ Rennes, Inria, CNRS,
IRISA
Rennes, France

Valérie Gouranton‡
Univ Rennes, INSA Rennes,
Inria, CNRS, IRISA
Rennes, France

<figure><img src="image_1.png" /><figcaption>Figure 1: Remember!, Representative Image, sketch of the main scene, ©Alma Oskouei.</figcaption></figure>

## ABSTRACT

Remember! is a VR experience about Lin, a cyborg whose memory is fading. To preserve their past, Lin visits a "memory rehabilitation center," where fragmented childhood memories are injected into their mind. The viewer explores six childhood memories from around the world through three interactive, minimalist black-and-white scenes. Custom soundscapes evolve as viewers collect "souvenirs," unlocking new sound patterns. Simple hand gestures drive the interaction, creating an intimate, poetic experience. In the final scene, viewers can draw their own memories in virtual space. Outside the headset, they are invited to share a personal childhood memory in a recording room for others to hear, completing the journey through memory, sound, and art.

**Index Terms:** Digital art, Virtual Reality

## 1 INTRODUCTION

Remember! is a VR art experience telling the story of Lin, a cyborg whose fading memory leads them to a "memory rehabilitation center." There, Lin undergoes a process to inject fragmented childhood memories into their mind, offering viewers a journey through lost realities. The experience features six childhood memories from people around the world, presented through three interactive, minimalist, black-and-white scenes. Custom soundscapes enhance the atmosphere, evolving as viewers progress and collect "souvenirs" that unlock new sound patterns. Interaction is driven by simple

<figure><img src="image_2.png" /><figcaption>Figure 2: First scene ©Alma Oskouei</figcaption></figure>

hand gestures, creating a poetic and intimate experience. In the final scene, viewers can draw their own memories in virtual space. Outside the VR headset, viewers are encouraged to visit the recording room to share personal childhood memories for others to hear. This immersive journey combines memory, sound, and art to explore human heritage and the passage of time.

## 2 ARTWORK DESCRIPTION

"Remember" invites the viewer to delve into the story of Line, a hybrid creature between human and machine, whose memory is beginning to fade. Regularly, creatures like Line visit a memory rehabilitation center where a series of memories are injected to preserve their human heritage. Through three distinct scenes with sleek visuals and elaborated sound design, we immerse ourselves in Line's mental universe, exploring each facet of these new memories. The first scene shows the interview between Line and the psychologist. Only her voice is heard, as the visitor is immersed in darkness, with a luminous shape, the hippocampus, the center of memories. The psychologist's voice draws the visitor into a state of hypnosis to

<footnote>*e-mail: alma.oskouei@gmail.com</footnote>

<footnote>†e-mail: ronan.gaugne@irisa.fr</footnote>

<footnote>‡e-mail: valerie.gouranton@irisa.fr</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_3.png" /><figcaption>Figure 3: Second scene ©Alma Oskouei</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_4.png" /><figcaption>Figure 4: Third scene ©Alma Oskouei</figcaption></figure>

access memories.

In the second scene, visitors find themselves in Line's memory room. Giant eyes hang from either side of the long but narrow room. It seems to be nowhere and everywhere at the same time, the boundaries of space undefined and without much light. As visitors move through the room, they have the opportunity to see the memory by entering the eye. To do this, he or she must approach the chosen eye and pull it out (Fig 3).

The visitor will then discover one of six complete memories, which could be a real human memory collected, or a fiction made by artificial intelligence. The memories appear as linear, luminous drawings, which expand all around the visitor as the memory is narrated by a voice (Fig 4). At the end of the experience, the visitor has the opportunity to record a memory of their own in the recording room and listen to the ones that others have recorded. A more complete description of Remember can be found at https://www.almaoskouei.com/remember

Particular attention has been paid to the design of the interactions, which are based on natural hand movements and positions. The virtual reality application was developed in Unity and deployed on Oculus Quest 2 and 3 headsets.

## 3 ARTWORK MANIFESTO

How can we make history our own, using history and personal stories? The artist Alma Oskouei mobilizes the memories of others and herself to create an uchronic version of events, to understand her native Iran, the Middle East through women's stories, while questioning the limits of memory in the test of distance, where the border between the real and the fictional becomes porous. Memory, in addition to being an indispensable tool in daily life, holds a crucial significance in the personal history of each human being. Memories, these fragments of life that we recall from the past, are, in reality, evolving continuously with each recollection of an event.

Each memory undergoes a gradual transformation throughout life, transitioning from a simple accurate fact to a fictional story. It is this metamorphosis that "Remember" draws inspiration from, using the immersive qualities of virtual reality to provide viewers with a temporal journey, narrating and illustrating captivating personal stories. Going back and forth in time with each memory, the audience explores the shifting dynamics of the impact of the conception of time on the way we view the world in the present, revealing the complexity and richness of our experience as human beings.

## 4 CREATION PROCESS

This project stems from a reflection on two axes that the artist has been exploring over the past five years. Firstly, the current state of the world, marked by voluntary migrations and exiles that tear us away from our roots. In this reality where access to places, flavors, and loved ones is limited, the sense of belonging often narrows down to our memories – these mental fragments that remind us of our origins and constitute our personal intangible heritage. The second axis of the artist's reflection revolves around the revolution brought about by artificial intelligence in our daily lives. She is particularly focused on its ability to intertwine reality and fiction, blurring the boundaries of what is true. At the core of this project are memories that we explore, originating from personal narratives of individuals from diverse backgrounds. Collected since 2022, these narratives sometimes serve as the basis and are altered by artificial intelligence. In other words, some memories we hear are real and some are not. These intimate stories undergo twists and manipulations to penetrate Line's mental space, creating temporal and spatial back-and-forths, therefore highlighting the uniqueness of human experiences.

## 5 ARTIST PRESENTATION

Alma Oskouei is an Iranian multidisciplinary artist based in Rennes, France. Her work explores memory, tradition, family stories, and the line between fiction and reality. With a master's degree in digital creation, she experiments with new forms of storytelling through virtual and mixed reality, creating immersive experiences that reflect on personal and collective memories. Her hybrid artistic approach, exploring the digital and the analog, focuses on the poetic potential of personal narrative, particularly in the realm of memories, family photos, and videos, and aims to question the boundaries between the real and the virtual, the documentary and the fictional in the world we live in today.

## ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors wish to thank Afshin Azizi who designed the sound environment and composed the original music for Remember. They also want to thank the team of students from INSA Rennes who developed the virtual reality environment: Nolhan Dumoulin, Prune Lepvraud, Jules Laplace-Treyture, Erwan Le-Boulaire, Ambre Levelle, Anouk Migliavacca, and Adrien Schneider.