Heavier Than Air is an XR installation created in collaboration with Setareh Fatehi and Karin Verbruggen, first presented at Over het IJ Festival in the Zeecontainer festival (Amsterdam, 2014) and Spoffin Festival (Amersfoort, 2014). Developed at a time when VR technologies were still in their infancy, the work speculates on a near-future scenario in which rising sea levels threaten to submerge entire nations, beginning with the already largely below sea level, Netherlands. Blending environmental anxiety with absurdist bureaucracy, the project invites participants into the fictional Human Underwater Adaptation Research Centre to test their readiness for a submerged life.

The centrepiece of the work is a 360-degree underwater video presented in VR. The video was filmed in a swimming pool matching the dimensions of a shipping container, where the video was also later presented. In the absence of commercial waterproof 360 cameras at the time, a custom system was built using a parabolic lens housed inside a weighted PVC case. Viewers, wearing an Oculus Rift DK2 headset, experience the illusion of being suspended within an underwater space, invaded by virus like bubbles that slowly converge around them. Alongside the VR component, the installation included interactive tests, framing the experience as part research centre, part performance, part immersive fiction.

Heavier Than Air occupies a space between speculative futures, embodied simulation, and playful critique. It merges technical experimentation with an environmental narrative, reflecting on the absurdities of human adaptation in the face of ecological collapse. The use of early-stage VR, combined with a shipping container installation that mirrored the original filming site, collapses the boundaries between virtual and physical space. By asking audiences to perform readiness for an underwater future, the work draws attention to the surreal normalisation of the looming environmental crisis.