GE Neuro – VR Musical Journey Inside DJ Reuben Wu’s Brain
GE Neuro is a journey inside a musician’s brain, more specifically, the brain of DJ Reuben Wu from UK rock band – Ladytron! GE Neuro is an VR experience created by Kite & Lightning, the game studio behind the surreal VR game “Insurgent.”
The psychedelic and trippy VR experience shrinks you to nano scale and wander inside the musician’s brain. Reubens musically powered imagination is the warm up world which leads you into a beautiful visualization of his amygdala surrounded by neurological responses to thoughts, ideas, fears and memories.
DJ Reuben Wu has composed the soundtrack for the experience and stands before you in VR as a full CG digital double. You even get to peer into his actual brain via a volumetric MRI scan he was gracious enough to endure!
The Story Behind GE Neuro In Kite & Lightning’s Own Words
Arriving at the final idea for Neuro was quite the journey. Katrina Craigwell at GE gave us unlimited freedom to explore which direction to head so we started with a blank canvas and the most mysterious and complex organ known to man. To kick off our internal exploration GE set up several meetings with prominent Neuro Scientists, allowing us face to face discussions about the current neuro landscape as well as bounce around initial ideas with the experts.
During this incubation stage we also took a field trip to Redbull’s headquarters in Los Angeles who have integrated neuro technologies into their athlete training programs. This experience was quite an eye opener and fueled one of our initial ideas of entering the mind of an athlete, to see through their eyes and journey into their brain during training all the way through to a big competition.
After several weeks of immersing ourselves into this infinitely complex world of the brain we found ourselves surrounded by ideas. It seemed the combination of VR with a subject as fascinating as the brain caused a creative chain reaction.
We wanted to explore it all but we were gripped by the question, how do we tell one amazing immersive story about the brain with so many equally compelling minds to explore…athletes, creative/logical thinkers, a person in love, the mind of a person with alzheimer’s and on and on. We finally landed on the notion that this should be a VR series and this pilot episode would be more of an introduction to the brain, a compelling, beautiful journey through the mind of a musician, playing on the both the imagination as well as tangible science. We we’re hoping to strike the right balance of education and entertainment that would inspire the viewer to seek more.
