A Place Called You, 2024, VR headset (HMD), spatial audio, generative AI-based interactive media, real-time 3D graphics, immersive sound art design, generative AI actors, pre-recorded opera vocals and AI-synthesized vocals, Unity-based real-time rendering environment, dry ice machine, screen, lighting, immersive sound installation, 10 min.

A Place Called You is an immersive intermedia opera that deconstructs and reconfigures the audiovisual language of traditional opera through the use of VR and AI technologies. Moving away from the stage- and performer-centered format, FUTUREDAYS constructs a “sensory narrative” grounded in auditory perception, inviting the audience to engage emotionally and perceptually with the flow of sound. This marks a shift from an opera that is watched to one that is heard and felt, expanding emotional resonance into a spatial experience. By replacing the conventional theater with a digital environment, the work creates an open field where sound, technology, and bodily perception intersect.A Place Called You unfolds from “HER,” one of the episodes in FUTUREDAYS’ metaverse opera series The Day I Chose to Be Me – ME, YOU, HIM, HER. The central figure, HER, reinterprets Micaëla from the classic opera Carmen, transforming her from a peripheral and passive character into a new subject of emotion and memory. Through AI-synthesized vocals and generative sound, HER speaks in her own voice, emerging as an autonomous being within a technological system that perceives gaze, movement, and speech. As viewers traverse HER’s inner landscape, they become coexistent subjects within the operatic space, experiencing both the emotional pulse and spatial resonance of her world.The work marks a pivotal moment in digital art by positioning technology not merely as a medium but as a narrative agent in its own right. FUTUREDAYS combines AI-synthesized vocals, generative sound systems, real-time 3D graphics, and interactive structures that respond to the audience’s movement and gaze to construct a fluid narrative in which technology continuously reorganizes the structure of music and the rhythm of emotion in real time. Functioning simultaneously as a conduit for emotion and as a stage itself, this system generates a unique sensory experience each time, unfolding an operatic scene where human perception and nonhuman algorithms resonate together.