AquaMachina is an immersive, speculative design project developed for PAT543 - Immersive Media at the University of Michigan, where students explored world-building techniques in Unity and learned the intricacies of immersive media. AquaMachina constructs a haunting, futuristic underwater city where themes of nostalgia, surveillance, and human resilience blend into a richly layered experience. Drawing inspiration from a diverse array of visual and musical aesthetics—including Late-Romantic music, electroacoustic influences, and German Expressionist visual design—this project creates a world that invites players to consider what lies between the boundaries of past, present, and future.

Project Overview:

AquaMachina takes users into a fictional city submerged beneath the ocean waves, once vibrant with industrial activity and the echoes of a mining town but now eerily silent, reclaimed by nature and time. Set in the year 2077, AquaMachina reflects a world where technological achievements and nature coexist in a state of decay and renewal. Upon entering the environment, players are greeted by a virtual receptionist who provides cryptic information about the area, including a warning about the presence of robotic state police who enforce order in the city’s illuminated zones. This controlled environment emphasizes the delicate balance between freedom and restriction, challenging players to navigate a world where the past’s industrial remnants merge with the future’s technological oversight.

Speculative Design and Conceptual Foundations:

The project’s conceptual approach draws on cultural influences from media like BioShock, The Shape of Water, and Tim Burton’s dark yet whimsical worlds. These inspirations are layered into AquaMachina’s speculative narrative, which imagines a world where the relics of human industry lie dormant beneath the ocean, haunted by their history. Aesthetically, the environment combines the mystery of underwater exploration with motifs from German Expressionism, creating an atmosphere of both wonder and tension. Each building, object, and soundscape invites users to consider the remnants of human presence within an unfamiliar and altered natural world.

Key Technical and Artistic Elements:

Sound Design with Spatial Audio: The auditory environment plays a crucial role in creating a sense of immersion and mystery. Steam Audio was employed to spatialize sound, enhancing the sense of depth and directionality within the environment. The sound design includes ambient sounds—like manipulated whale calls created with a theremin and tones from a slide guitar with a bluesy quality—that add layers of melancholy and nostalgia. Each sound is strategically placed to evoke different areas within the city, making exploration a multi-sensory experience.

Interactive Audio Cues: Audio-trigger colliders were incorporated throughout AquaMachina’s map, allowing players to activate specific sounds as they encounter key objects or locations, such as abandoned buildings or remnants of machinery. These auditory cues not only deepen the sense of interaction but also contribute to the speculative narrative by hinting at stories and events tied to AquaMachina’s mysterious past.

Dynamic Particle and Visual Effects: Unity’s particle systems were used to create the illusion of underwater currents, floating particles, and soft light diffusion, adding to the submerged aesthetic. The environment’s lighting is dim and shadowed, evoking the feel of a city that once thrived but is now engulfed in the darkness of the deep sea. Unity’s visual effects, including fog and customized shaders, contribute to the atmosphere, creating a blurred boundary between visibility and obscurity.

Narrative-Driven Interaction: From the opening message that greets “Homosapien” visitors to the instructions regarding restricted zones, every interaction in AquaMachina is designed to reinforce the speculative narrative. The robotic state police represent a symbol of authority, maintaining order and restricting movement. This controlled environment hints at a dystopian backstory and invites players to question the role of authority, surveillance, and freedom in AquaMachina’s world.

Themes of Liberty, Authority, and Surveillance:

The narrative in AquaMachina explores the delicate interplay between liberty and control, resonating with contemporary societal issues. The state police and their warnings serve as a constant reminder of the restrictive oversight that permeates the city, subtly critiquing the surveillance state. This critique is embedded within the interactions with virtual characters and environmental cues, which encourage users to reflect on the tension between exploration and obedience within controlled spaces. AquaMachina thus becomes a platform for players to confront questions of liberty and authority in a way that resonates with both historical and futuristic themes.

Research Areas:

Speculative Design and World-Building

Immersive Media and Virtual Environments

Spatial Audio and Interactive Soundscapes

Narrative Theory in Digital Media

Political Critique and Thematic Exploration in VR

Future Directions:

The AquaMachina project demonstrates the potential of immersive media to blend narrative and environmental design, but several key areas for further development could enhance this experience:

Expanded Interactivity and Environmental Details: To increase player engagement, future iterations could introduce more interactive elements, such as additional objects that react to the player’s presence, further developing the feeling of discovery within the city. New areas could also be designed to offer more hidden zones with their own unique sounds and visuals.

Advanced Spatial Audio and Localization: While spatial audio was integrated through Steam Audio, future development could refine sound localization and directionality, especially in enclosed spaces. Enhancing audio spatialization would further immerse players in the aquatic depths, making the environment feel both realistic and otherworldly.

Deeper Political Narrative and Character Interaction: Expanding the narrative to include new virtual characters or more elaborate interactions with the state police would offer a richer exploration of authority themes. Players could encounter conversations or scripted events that reveal more about AquaMachina’s backstory, adding complexity to its critique of liberty and surveillance.

Richer Soundscapes and Musical Layers: With additional development time, the auditory experience could include a wider variety of sounds, from industrial echoes to musical motifs that evolve with player movement, enhancing emotional engagement. Integrating a more varied sound palette, such as layered harmonic textures, could further amplify the thematic tones of nostalgia and melancholy.

Conclusion:

AquaMachina exemplifies the power of speculative design and immersive media to create worlds that are not only visually and aurally engaging but also thematically thought-provoking. By blending aesthetic inspirations from different historical and artistic movements, AquaMachina invites players to reflect on human innovation, societal control, and the resilience of nature. Moving forward, this project holds the potential for expansion into an even richer narrative experience, fostering deeper player engagement and continued exploration of speculative themes in digital environments.