La Dispersion du Fils: Into regions of incomprehensibility

La Dispersion du Fils concerns the tragedy of Actaeon, the hunter transformed into a stag and chased down and devoured by his own hounds. The work can be taken as an algorithmic interpretation of the tale’s central themes: metamorphosis and transcendence, pursuit of forbidden knowledge or unattainable goals, sacrifice and transgression, chance and control. Designed for display in a 360° omnistereoscopic multi-user virtual reality theatre, the work takes the form of a voyage through vast, living three-dimensional structures constructed entirely from audio-visual elements found in the film archives of Jean Michel Bruyère and the LFKs. The artwork is real-time, generative, aleatoric and chaotic; never repeating and never ending. Any single moment is guaranteed to never be witnessed again, and of all the possible states the system might assume, most will never be seen at all. This paper discussed both the immersive and emergent aspects of the work, from both technical and aesthetic viewpoints.