Reflections in the Visual Arts

Julia Uhr - Shelter Project - ED3.jpg

The Stillness in the Room

Julia Uhr

Julia Uhr

The Stillness in the Room

Julia Uhr is a Ph.D. student at the ATLAS Institute, CU Boulder, where her research focuses on virtual and augmented reality. She also holds a J.D. and an M.A. in philosophy from CU. 

Julia Uhr writes: The Stillness in the Room is a virtual reality game and immersive research environment based on the life and work of Emily Dickinson. As a game, it subverts the “escape room” genre by encouraging players to “escape” by delving inward rather than outward. As a research environment, it digitally reproduces the Dickinson Homestead in VR, including images of Emily Dickinson’s hand-written poems with transcriptions and metadata from the Emily Dickinson Archive, interactive annotations, and references to Dickinson scholarship. The goal is to create a playful virtual environment where people can explore the richness of solitude and immerse themselves in poetry. This is currently a work in progress. The part that is finished and can be seen in the video is the Emily Dickinson Reading Room, the final scene of the game, set in Emily Dickinson's bedroom where she wrote most of her poetry.