APED Studio: Interactive Sculptures for VR Installations

I work with APED Studio, where we try to present our work through values we care about: harmony, balance, and proportion. We borrow from older mediums like painting, music, sculpture, and combine them with newer tools like VR, Animatronics, and installation to tell the story better. We treat our subjects in a non-anecdotal, emotionally neutral way. We try to avoid trends and rigid beliefs and let the story and the aesthetics decide.

Over the years we’ve shown our installations in digital and new media festivals, first in Iran at TADAEX 8 (2018) and then in Poland at SURVIVAL 17 (2019). We also collaborated with escape rooms, designing automated missions and puzzles using Raspberry Pi, Arduino, and Kinect.

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My role

Inside the team, I took care of the technical side. My job was to give life to the interactive sculptures we design, usually by building small robots and control systems that make the work responsive, making models and parts ready and then making them with 3D printing and Laser Cuts, and taking care of technical setups and installations. I also propose alternative technical paths when the concept needs a different angle, and I plan production so the installation can be shipped, installed, and maintained abroad without surprises when team were abroad.

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The project: “Immanuel”

“Immanuel” is an immersive post-human installation / VR experience. It follows a layered, step-by-step path: read a graphic novel, enter an abandoned laboratory, run experiments, watch a video, then meet the eponymous Immanuel in VR. Here is a clip we made in one of our exhibitions:

The environment invites the viewer to move gradually into a future where research objects try to live separate—yet inevitably short—lives. Meanwhile, humanity loops through its own conflicts, fears, and resentments. In the VR flashback, you see the room as it used to be, and you watch Immanuel being born, and dying, again and again. Here are some photos from Survival17 exhibition: