In VR, we become ghosts and gather at the café. Or a new documentary. “Midnight Ghost Café” by Susanne Barthl

I would like to introduce “Midnight Ghost Café”.

Midnight Ghost Café is a VR work about a café where ghosts gather.
Here are narratives that take place not in the physical body, but as ethereal beings, connected to multiple lands. The work features a familiar café with a modern feel, but at the same time, it also invites the viewer to imagine a place other than here.

What is happening in the café where these talkative ghosts are relaxing?
Come and relax with us.
Or perhaps you will recall that someone talked with you in the café.

You can experience the work from the following (VR/HMD recommended, can also be viewed with a web browser)

For VR

If you have an HMD device, click the “Try Now” button on your PC (web browser), then click the VR icon on the scene page.

Download STYLY for Steam
https://store.steampowered.com/app/693990/STYLYVR_PLATFORM_FOR_ULTRA_EXPERIENCE/

Download STYLY for Oculus Quest
https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/3982198145147898/

Want to know more about how to experience a scene?
For more information on how to experience VR scenes, please refer to the following article.

For Web Viewers

The basic operation of STYLY Web/VR is as follows.

When experiencing on the Web, the following operations can be used to move around.

Mouse	Move the viewpoint
W	Go forward
S	Go backward
D	Go right
A	Go left
Q	Move downward
E	Move upward

If the screen is too small to see, select the square icon in the lower right corner to view full screen.

The three round icons on the right side of the screen can also be used for the following operations.

Reset Position	Return to the initial position
Usage and Setting	Open Usage and Setting check
Change Volume	Set the volume setting

Description of the work by the author

In a cafe in Berlin, where people meet to enjoy delicious coffee and pastries, former regulars appear after midnight in the form of ghosts. They are sharing their stories with the player, who is able to have a very atmospheric, virtual cafe experience.

This experience is a collage of memories of a special place – the caf Two & Two in Berlin, Neuklln – and some of my friends who have frequented it with or without me, while they were living in Berlin and have since moved away. It is a documentary and also very personal piece that let’s everyone in the world visit this caf and have a chat with the owner as well as my friends.

I believe that it is not only the place but the people and their stories that create a reality. In the displaced society in which we are now unable to meet each other at will, I have felt the need to create a space for my friends to meet in VR.

Order a coffee and get some pastries and enjoy this extension of reality.

Susanne Barthl

Ms ｜Germany

Born in Austria, 1986.

Designer based in Berlin.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fiktiverealitaeten/  (@fiktiverealitaeten)

WEB: https://susannebarthl.myportfolio.com

The uniqueness of the Midnight Ghost Café

Here are some of the unique aspects of “Midnight Ghost Café.”

Warm space expressed through photogrammetry

As the title suggests, “Midnight Ghost Café” is a VR work set in a café.
The objects in the café, which are photogrammetrically replicas of reality, give the impression of being somewhat unreliable and faintly crumbling.
However, the instability of the café is a perfect match for a place where you can meet ghosts.
The blurred outlines of the objects blur the boundary between reality and the spirit world, creating a space that poetically expresses a café at night.

Ghosts represented by translucent psychic energy

Various ghosts are gathered in “Midnight Ghost Café.”

These ghost objects are translucent, glowing with light.
The characters are made with the typical qualities of objects in VR, such as untouchability, ambiguous three-dimensionality, and floppy texture.

Weightless space

Ghosts greet us as we enter the café.
Each character has a series of three speech balloons, and by selecting the interface, the ghosts speak to us.
The ghosts speak to us as they unfold their characters in space.

In this space, we can lift bread, cake, cookies, coffee, etc., but the objects we move will not obey gravity and will stop there and drift in space.

Where they gather across the land.

The ghosts will speak of their status as real people and introduce themselves.

The restaurant has English signs and menus, but as you talk to the ghosts, you realize that they come from all over the world.
Some ghosts introduce themselves like Japanese children.

Virtual Reality as a World of Ghosts

Let us briefly consider the ghostly presence in virtual reality.

The inability of objects to be touched or penetrated

When we create VR, we realize that the world created by 3DCG is only a visual representation of the world.
All objects in VR must be given a physical simulation to be touched, or gravity, elasticity, etc. will not occur.
In addition, the simulated hand image displayed in VR mimics the movement of your own hand, but it moves falteringly with subtle lag and shaking of the object.

The fact that such objects feel like ghosts is a common feeling among VR and 3DCG creators.

Motifs of overlapping objects also appear in the works of Akihiko Taniguchi, who has presented many video and VR works.
The image is from “Music Video Directed by Akihiko Taniguchi.”
In this way, the physical body appears like a ghost at the moment when its physical nature is ignored and it appears only as visual information.

Meta (Facebook) avatar and ghost

The fact that the avatar presented by Meta (formerly Facebook) has no legs has also become a hot topic in the community of those interested in VR.

The body of such avatars synchronizes with the image of the body of a legless Japanese ghost.

These bodily sensations represent situations in which the land that exists virtually is not actually connected to the ground, and the uncertainty of the legs that allow one to move through virtual space while at home at one’s desk.

It is no exaggeration to say that the current metaverse boom was ignited by Meta’s acquisition of Oculus and its declared focus on developing the metaverse.
It has become one of the iconic ideas of VR, although it is also a feature of avatars created by technical challenges of devices such as body tracking (technology to acquire the user’s body).

The “Midnight Ghost Café” is a work that incorporates the theme of ghosts (ghosts) found in VR into a space.

A New Form of Documentary

As a post-documentary

Documentary is a technique for recording an event or situation and re-sharing it in another time and place, primarily through the medium of video.
This documentary has been considered important in terms of organizing historical facts and, conversely, preserving and sharing the expressions and behaviors of certain people who are part of history and sometimes spill over into it.

Today, however, the power of documentary is sometimes criticized for its tendency to generate authority by the subjects it photographs, preserves, and organizes, and to create exploitative structures that extend from Orientalism and poverty pornography.

This “Midnight Ghost Café” preserves the voice of an existential figure and the facial expressions contained in it, but gives birth to narratives that obscure the relationship between speaker and listener, the material body, and the context and tense of the conversation.

A conversation with a ghost consists of three choices, which can be made in any order or at the same time, and depending on how they interact, a narrative can be formed, or the ghost may present multiple chunks of speech or text to us at the same time.

It can be said that conversations about what we want to talk about now, what may be talked about in the future, and what may have been talked about in the past are all intermingling and unfolding in the space at the same time.

If we look at the behavior of these talkative ghosts as a bug, then we can also accept the flood of information that occurs today as a bug.

But at the same time, each and every voice out there has a gentle and calm expression and temperature.
Even though the voices are data and spread on the virtual reality, the friendly feelings of the ghosts toward the viewers are there.
There are no realistic barriers, and the relationship between speaking and listening collapses cheerfully.

It can be said that this is an expression of the exchange of information in today’s world of on-demand, real-time content and remote communication, as well as the emotions of the people there, who are trying to live a healthy life.

A place where “participation” that seems to be current is born.

“Midnight Ghost Café” is a work that symbolizes the uncertainty and exploration of contemporary forms of gathering.

For example, if the setting of this work were a “party,” the experiences of the ghosts and the viewers would be different.
A party, one of the most representative examples of a gathering place, separates the host and the participants, emphasizing the ritualistic and ceremonial aspects of socializing.

In “Ethica of Expression: Toward Considering the Social Practice of Art” (Eishi Katsura, 2020, Seikyusha), parties are described as follows.

The etymology of the word “party” comes from the Latin word “partita,” meaning “to divide. If we take “participation” literally, it means to become a member (a part) of a group, or to “do a part” or “play a role. I see, participation is not only to become a member, but also to play an appropriate role, which may be what makes it possible.

The café is chosen as a place while cleverly avoiding the forces of classification, classification, and capitalization that are created by such “gathering” and “participation.

Today, attention is focused on concepts that create ways of spending time that are not part of the workerly frameworks created by modernity, such as occupation and lifestyle.
Many of the places that advocate third places, such as Starbucks and third communities, take the form of cafes and restaurants.
This has the effect of dismantling the power of categorizing and naming the owner-workers involved in gathering according to a specific purpose, and allowing the gathering to take place alongside the purpose of eating and drinking.

The café is used to create a sense of freedom in conversation for the viewer, and a warm conversation with the ghosts.
The contemporary narrative of “Midnight Ghost Café” is born from the combination of these elements.

See you again as a ghost!

The “Midnight Ghost Café” will give us the opportunity to realize that we can become ghosts in virtual reality, that we can talk to each other in the warmth of a café, and that we can create new forms of interaction while deconstructing the methods of participation and documentary.

Finally, to the right of the entrance to the café, you will find an object that looks like a cat’s eyeball, blinking faintly.
As we enter or leave the café, we will be gazed upon by the presence of only this eyeball.

What does this eyeball-only presence represent?
What do you think this gaze represents?

One frightening possibility is that it may represent those who have already lost even their bodies, the real ghosts, watching over us and this cafe.

The work can be experienced from the following (VR/HMD recommended, can also be viewed with a web browser)

For VR

If you have an HMD device, click on the VR icon on the scene page after clicking on the “Try Now” button from your PC (web browser).

Download STYLY for Steam
https://store.steampowered.com/app/693990/STYLYVR_PLATFORM_FOR_ULTRA_EXPERIENCE/

Download STYLY for Oculus Quest
https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/3982198145147898/

Want to know more about how to experience a scene?
For more information on how to experience VR scenes, please refer to the following article.

For Web Viewers

The basic operation of STYLY Web/VR is as follows.

When experiencing on the Web, the following operations can be used to move around.

Mouse	Move the viewpoint
W	Go forward
S	Go backward
D	Go right
A	Go left
Q	Move downward
E	Move upward

If the screen is too small to see, select the square icon in the lower right corner to view full screen.

The three round icons on the right side of the screen can also be used for the following operations.

Reset Position	Return to the initial position
Usage and Setting	Open Usage and Setting check
Change Volume	Set the volume setting