“Do I pass by moments, or do moments pass by me?”

Wearing a VR headset, you walk on your own through a dark, musical dreamscape. A stray dog guides you past a choir of murmuring people, a dying horse, and commuters whose thoughts you can hear, until you meet your own 3D mirror image and become a spectator of your own body. Songs for a Passerby is a VR opera about how we relate to a world of things that pass.

You walk through an entire city in Songs for a Passerby without ever leaving the room. I built the impossible spaces system that makes this possible: it folds the city into a single physical room, so every street and subway corridor fits inside the same few square meters. If it works, you don’t notice it at all. I also worked closely with art director Aron Fels and built the systems and tools that let him shape the world without fighting the tech.

Writen and Directed by: Celine Daemen //  Art direction: Aron Fels // Music: Asa Horvitz // Libretto: Olivier Herter // Sound & Mixing: Wouter Snoei // Production: Nicky Groot // Development: Sjoerd van Acker // Physical space design: Carlijn Veurink // 3D art: Bats Bronsveld (In Memoriam) & Eline Oppewal // Model design: Lisanne Hoogerwerf // Photogrammetry art: Dajo Brinkman & Tommy Jansen // Child casting & guidance: Luca Meisters (Sproet Casting) // Horse training & guidance: Chandrika Brevet (Asvayan Stables) // Technical advice: Cerezo Boldewijn // Cast: Nadia Amin, Vincent van den Berg, Hans Croiset, Sterre Konijn, Misja Nolet, Carl Refos, Michaela Riener, Eleonora Schrickx, Georgi Sztojanov, Garbo, Micha, Raffie & Rey