I made this project for my final assignment in my introduction to virtual reality class. The basic premise of my project is that the viewer is a doll within a dollhouse. The viewer ventures through the dollhouse only to find out that, once the outside light grows brighter and the box raises, they're inside a dollhouse on a store shelf.

I came up with this project idea because I thought it was unique and special to VR. Experiencing the dollhouse in virtual reality would be an immersive experience that conveys the feelings and emotions better than a short film could. Some of the themes are femininity, feeling trapped/small, unoriginality, and consumerism.

Dolls, throughout history, have been disputed figures both literally and figuratively. Some see them as enforcing a toxic mindset on young girls that indoctrinates them into an overly-feminine way of viewing women, others see dolls as empowering; how the viewer interprets this will depend on their preconceived notions of dolls, which I find interesting.

Another theme this experience will communicate is the feeling of being trapped/small. As a doll, one is quite literally smaller. The feeling of being in a dollhouse inside a box on a store shelf is meant to make you feel small and somewhat powerless. You're made to feel smaller by your size and your position. It also makes you feel trapped.

Another one of the themes is unoriginality. As a doll, you're one of many, mass-produced and repeated. It's hard to feel original when you live in the same house with the same furniture as 'everyone else' and you wear the same clothes and look the exact same.

One of my other themes is consumerism. The experience takes place in a dollhouse on a store shelf. The experience is also representative of mass consumerism and overproduction as we often see in our current landscape.