Lost Horizons: Constructing a Fiction of Knowledge

This paper, by Debbie Ding of Nanyang Technological University, examines the relationship between psychogeographical practices and artistic practices that use video game engines to construct virtual reality spaces. Written from the dual perspective of an academic and an artist-technologist, it presents a case study of Lost Horizons (2022), an immersive artwork built for the social platform VRChat. The work has no conventional goals or quests; instead, it invites players to wander a large virtual world, where scattered clues about crash-landed passengers and conspiracy materials prompt viewers to assemble their own emergent narratives. The central argument is that juxtaposing different perspectives and framings destabilizes the singular vantage point and produces a "fiction of knowledge."

The theoretical framework draws on spatial and visual histories, situating virtual reality within a lineage of immersive media that includes the camera obscura, panoramas, cinema, and 360 video. The author traces connections between cinema and cartography through scholars such as Benjamin, Bruno, and Conley, and argues that digital maps have in turn absorbed photographic and cinematic conventions of camera angle, zoom, and perspective shift. To ground these ideas, the paper examines three photographs: the James Webb Space Telescope's Cosmic Cliffs image, a Mars Rover selfie, and an aircrew photograph from the search for missing flight MH370. Each is read as an example of how images construct knowledge about domains not yet fully understood.

The paper's scope is conceptual and practice-based rather than empirical, so it reports no survey data or quantitative findings. Its methodology consists of artistic development, close reading of selected images, and a review of relevant literature in media and cartography studies. The work was produced during C/O Berlin's Digital Fellowship 2022 and supported by a grant from the National Arts Council Singapore, and it was exhibited at C/O Digital's Festival in December 2022. The paper aims to offer aesthetic and technical world-building strategies for artists, researchers, and writers working in virtual environments.