Calls (2021) is a show adapted from a French series called Calls (2017), Calls (2021) is a much more detailed version, both in form and content. Contrary to the “forward iteration” revolution, this show chooses to do a “backward iteration”. It almost completely abandoned the pictures compared to normal tv series, the visual part only has some sonic patterns, curves and lines, diffuse color ripples, the narrative is only based on the dialogues through the calls. As for the genre, this show is somewhere between science fiction and fantasy, starting from the daily routine of intimate relationships, then suddenly expanding to the collapse of the universe and the juxtaposition of time. It explores topics about time travel, parallel worlds, wormhole cruising, and it keeps asking the audience the questions: Is there a master of the universe? Where is the boundary of our free will? What is the meaning of so-called fate? Are our actions that we think we are changing the world and our destiny merely following some higher will, but mistakenly thinking we can feel the lines of fate? Or, is time a fiction? Can we exist here and there at the same time?

Theoretical settings in Calls (2021):

-Parallel universes theory.

Different spaces with the same physical laws can have different consequences in the quantum theory, and all possible consequences form a universe. In Calls (2021), different parallel worlds experience the same events, only with errors in time.

-Spacetime interlacing.

Different worlds cannot communicate with each other and interfere with each other, but when there is mutual communication or influence, world disorder can be generated.

-Fate theory.

In Calls (2021), everything that happens in the universe is predetermined and cannot be changed.

-Fate Theory and Correction.

In the premise of world disorder and fate theory, calls can connect people in different parallel worlds together, people who have experienced something can influence people who have not yet experienced through the call. For example, the 50-year-old self can contact the 30-year-old self and tell the self who would have had an accident how to avoid it.

Call is set up in such a way that if a destiny-altering action occurs, the universe will automatically fix it, as evidenced by A Small Correction – individual bones break, the whole body melts and dies, or Big Correction – all floating in the air, the sky unfolds to form a variety of light and color, and finally the entire universe reset.

Project ideas:

Calls (2021) gave me inspirations, I want to curate an immersive experience through sounds and visuals. The theoretical framework is basically from the book The Hidden Reality and The Elegant Universe. The two books present many models of the universe, but none of them are science fiction, they are rigorous scientific inferences. It introduces the existence of multiple realities, where we are in other realities, maybe not human, or maybe a tiny ant. Quantum Reality Theory: Our daily experience is nothing but a holographic projection, and the real physical processes take place on a distant surface that wraps around us. The pain we feel now is real, but it reflects physical processes in a distant reality. Artificial universe theory: we might live in a computer simulation, super-advanced computer can simulate the universe. There is the braneworld scenario, assuming our universe is a slab floating in higher dimensional space, there may be many more such slabs, the multiverse is like a long loaf of bread, our universe is one of the slices.

In details, I want to develop my project through sound and visual aspects. 

Sound: 

Some environment sounds, such as street sounds, and it will get louder and noisier gradually (indicating something abnormal is happening, world is getting messier). 

Visual: 

Projection on the walls – street scene, people walking, and when the sounds get noisier, there will be some crazier scenes, the ground is shaking etc…

3d modelling (unreal engine), projection mapping in a bowl – A simulated reality, a classroom scene, as the sound becomes noisy, there will be some strange things to happen in this world, such as the face began to change or distort, all become the same person or other creatures, etc..

 

Then, the participants will be instructed to close their eyes, they will be guided by audios to experience the other hidden realities in different universes (I am still thinking about this part).