Muted Avatars * 2026
Sommerset House (London, UK)
Muted Avatars is an experimental VR cinematic installation by presented at Somerset House (Inigo Rooms), London, from 13–17 February 2026.
Developed through embodied research journeys inside the social virtual reality platform VRChat, the work offers a critical lens on social virtual reality through the intertwined notions of attention and presence, asking what it really means to “be with” others through avatars, and what may be diminished, displaced, or lost when relational life is mediated by virtual embodiment.
Rather than amplifying the familiar dynamics of social VR, such as hyperstimulation, performative speed, constant interaction, Muted Avatars proposes a deliberate counter-practice: it reclaims stillness as a dense, meaningful mode of presence. The installation invites audiences to sustain time, concentrate attention, and remain with subtle shifts rather than chasing novelty or response. Here, quietness is not absence but a form of intensity, an ethical and aesthetic stance that reframes immersion as potentially aligned with care, containment, and contemplation, not only spectacle or continuous engagement.
The project sits within Reis’s broader arts-based research on immersive arts applied to science, heritage, and cultural communication, and it reopens foundational XR concepts, such as presence, immersion, affect, from a more human, attentive perspective. Muted Avatars was produced within SciCommXR, his Marie Skłodowska-Curie arts-based postdoctoral project at the University of Salamanca, and developed during a Visiting Scholarship and Artistic Residency at King’s College London, within the Department of Digital Humanities.
The installation was created in collaboration with Yangfangya Gao, Xue Jiang, and Maya Appiagyei-Yousuf (King’s College London students), who participated as VR performers, expanding the work’s inquiry into how bodies, gestures, and attention can be choreographed and felt within networked virtual space.
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