Amorphous is the next experience in our Playing with Reality collection. Playing with Reality is a series of VR, MR, and AR works, narrated by Tilda Swinton, exploring stigmatised mental health conditions by questioning how we experience the world around us.
“Amorphous is our most joyful one yet. Its subject is body image — the picture we have in our minds that tells us what our body looks and feels like, and what happens when that image is distorted.” — May Abdalla, Creative Director
The work draws on accounts from people with altered self-perception: from those dancing under the weight of missing limbs to others on a journey of self-transformation using non-human components. First-person testimonies, combined with embodied research in virtual reality and body image, inform a fantastical story about rebuilding ourselves from scratch — moving, flying, and bounding in ways our former physiques only dreamed of. Participants first confront a reflected version of themselves in an augmented reality mirror, interacting through speech to deconstruct their reflection. This is followed by a VR segment that immerses users in alternate-limbed bodies within a physics-driven world, transforming frustration with their forms into joyful celebration and discovery.
The experience creates a collective, liberating space where participants can reimagine their bodies — not as fixed, but as fluid, expressive, and open to transformation.
Now in development.
Amorphous is developed through a research-led, iterative process grounded in lived experience. We worked closely with participants with lived experience of body dysmorphia and altered self-perception, recording testimonies that shaped the emotional and narrative core of the work.
We held a public workshop at IDFA DocLab in autumn 2024 to explore how people move, feel, and relate to unfamiliar bodies. Participants tested new forms of embodiment, from inhabiting exaggerated physical forms to experimenting with movement, interaction, and perspective. The experience won the DocLab Forum Award at the festival.
“We are trying to approach this in a fresh way — exploring what it feels like to sit in your skin, or a new skin, and getting you to think deeper about your body, your abilities and inabilities, your strength, and the interior understanding of how you know your body.” — Barry Gene Murphy, Creative Director
The process moves between storytelling, technical experimentation, and audience testing, ensuring the work remains grounded in real experience while opening up new, imaginative possibilities for how we understand and inhabit our bodies. By combining AR, VR, physical interaction, and narrative, Amorphous aims to create a transformative, playful, and deeply empathetic exploration of body, identity, and perception.
