“The whole project contemplates how we search for life” – Eliza McNitt (ASTRA)

With her passion for space and space exploration, Eliza McNitt contributed to the boom in virtual reality with the success of SPHERES (and a 5-star voice cast). Her return this year with ASTRA, presented as a world premiere in competition at SXSW, renews this desire to explore the unknown and the origin of life. A longer experience, which once again takes you to the stars. Read on.

Embark on a mixed reality journey that transforms your room into a spaceship for a mission to the deepest corners of the cosmos. Following the research of your late astrobiologist mother, travel in space and visit planets and their dark moons in the search for life. You’ll try to uncover the mystery of life in the universe and make sense of your loss and grief. ASTRA blends storytelling, mixed reality and interactive design with stunning environments, guiding you through a deeply personal yet universal adventure.

ASTRA – Synopsis

Eliza McNitt – I’m a filmmaker, writer and director. ASTRA is a search for life in the universe as a means to understand the loss of a parent on earth and transport you from your living room to otherworldly planets and their dark moons.

ASTRA is available on Meta Store

Technology Enabling Storytelling

E. M. – VR and AR technology lends itself to many layers of imagination. When I began working on ASTRA, it had been six years since I did Spheres (see our interview) and the technology had evolved so dramatically. You had controllers to experience Spheres, but now you have really amazing hand-tracking that actually gives you a sense of presence.

E. M. – I wanted to create an experience where you were human, you were a character in the story, and you have a grounded presence as a human being. Because of the technology, I felt it best served a story about being a human in space.

E. M. – When we began the project, it was the one year anniversary of the passing of my parents. I think that was something clearly part of the fabric of my existence. It ultimately became part of the project in an undeniable way because it was where my heart was at that moment in processing those feelings.

E. M. – The experience begins in AR with a box. You can see your hands, and you open the box. Inside are unsentimental objects left behind by your mother, who is an astrobiologist. The objects end up being clues for your journey ahead. What’s so incredible about the technology now is that you’re literally picking these things up. You can look at them one by one in detail.

E. M. – In the box, you find a tape recorder and you place a tape inside and the voice recordings of your mother begin as the world around you transforms into a spaceship and you are launched into outer space. This is where I wanted to really use this mixed reality technology as a storytelling tool.

E. M. – You begin in reality, you see all of these items and like memories, all of these items become part of the experience you’re about to have. The experience evolves from the spaceship to having a dream. When you experience memories, they kind of come in and out of your consciousness while you’re awake.

E. M. – So to me, that felt like the spaceship is the vessel for these memories. But then there are the worlds you access that are in full VR. To me that was like the dream where you’re actually fully immersed in those. That’s where you hear your mother’s recordings as they go in and out of the world telling you about the science around it.

Developing the Gesture Interactions

E. M. – In space, there are moons covered in water and these are the most likely places where we will discover life, or so we think. That is really fascinating to me. You have Titan, which is a moon of Saturn that has lakes of methane. You have Europa, which is a complete ocean world beneath these layers of ice. You travel to these moons and others to collect chemical ingredients that are vital for life.

E. M. – Because this is a project about reaching out to your mother, reaching out to life when you cannot reach it––that’s how the gesture interaction was born. You have to reach out with your hand to collect each chemical ingredient found on the moons you explore. How do you make methane memorable? Like with the objects in the box at the beginning, you create an emotional connection with the chemical ingredients by physically touching them.

A Reflection on Life as We Recognize It

E. M. – The final sequence of ASTRA is a 360 degree meditation on life and is in the form of a bedtime story. I think one of the most important parts of this sequence is that you observe the formation of a star, and this is a cosmic process through which six ingredients for life are created.

E. M. – It’s a full-circle moment. The whole project contemplates how we search for life in chemical ingredients that symbolize life as we understand it. But when we actually discover life, will it present itself in a form that we have yet to recognize? That’s how I feel about the project and how life connects to death, where, when a parent passes away, you are searching for signs that they’re still there, that they’re still around.