Wasteland

“Wastelands” is an anthropocenic lyric poem visualised as landscape painting and virtual world experience. A minimalist virtual world, landscape artwork. It explores the ecological intricacies of urban cities alongside a critique of contemporary conventions of games. The work was originally commissioned for Nanyang Technological University Museum (NTU Museum)'s Construction in Every Corner exhibition, which opened on 13 January 2025, and the work is intended to be played live from VRChat, a free-to-play massively multiplayer online virtual reality platform. With a design emphasis on cross-platform accessibility, the work is accessible on devices ranging from PC to high-end VR systems to standalone headsets.

"Wasteland" draws inspiration from a specific type of ecological system in Singapore known as the “waste-woodland” (Yee et al. 2016), which arises after land is cleared for development and then abandoned because it is intended for future development. The work pays homage to one of Second Life’s early significant works, The Far Away (2006) by AM Radio, where many players first discovered the joy of virtual worlds through the experience of a simple wheatfield. The virtual world resists against the hyper-stimulation of conventional MMORPG games—there is no winning or losing, just open-ended exploration within a natural environment within virtual reality. The minimalist aesthetic of Wasteland mirrors the efficiency and elegance of natural systems finding their own balance. As Singapore searches for low-carbon alternatives to its energy supply, there has been significant research and discussion into the feasibility of nuclear energy, with the Jurong Caverns having been built to potentially accommodate a future nuclear reactor. Singapore’s extremely limited geographical area complicates the challenge of finding potential sites for storing nuclear waste without endangering Singapore’s 5.9 million inhabitants who live on an island of only 49 km from east to west and 28 km from north to south.

"Wasteland" is an immersive VR experience that invites players to slow down. It seeks to evoke ecological awareness and a deeper connection to the natural world through an intentionally minimal game design and aesthetic, creating space for contemplation and meditative interaction alongside other players, both from the exhibition and from the internet.

The landscape of the wasteland is both an everyday sight in urban cities and also a post-apocalyptic image—an image of environmental change that has been shaped by both human and non-human actors, gesturing towards a time after humans.

Within the first two weeks of launch, over 20000 visitors have experienced the work online, with players spending hours in public and private instances of the world. Some instances of the world received over 54 simultaneous in-game visitors.