River Writer VR

River Writer is a proof of concept for virtual-reality based interactive poetry-writing application. Set on a virtual levee at golden hour, users fish words out of a literal stream of consciousness-- words put into an array that flow from spawning volumes into an kill volume. This method creates randomization. The user then has the ability to carry and drop these word selections on an environment that essentially acts as a couplet palette in the three cardinal directions opposing the river of words. Over the course of “creative play,” a user has space to create at least 3 couplets or 6 lines of poetry, intentionally placing the randomized, fished diction on the level. The diction utilized for this proof of concept was taken from the digital born text “Diamonds in Dystopia” (written by Vincent A. Cellucci, published in Absence Like Sun" (Lavender Ink. 2019) and anthologized in Best American Experimental Writing, 2018, Wesleyan University Press), but other texts can be substituted in future iterations. This application and level was created by Vincent Cellucci with assistance from Marc Aubanel using Unreal Game Engine 4. The words were modeled with great facility, albeit individually, in Rhinoceros 6.