Feels Like Power is an manuscript of immersive VR poems and prose essays about the long afterlives of the Pacific War. The project’s works are set primarily in and around U.S. military bases in Japan, Korea, Guam, Singapore, and the Philippines, but also include locations in the U.S. and in cyberspace.
The poems are written inside panoramic spherical photographs. When you read the poems in 3D, the poems extend panoramically around, above, and below you. By moving your head and body, you can navigate the environment and the text within it. The poems are accessible in 3D with a VR headset or in 2D with a phone, tablet, or laptop.
The project invites you to experience poems spatially in each site, and to travel between sites to discover resonances and contrasts. What can we learn about war, about its overlap with domestic life, about history and humanity, from bringing these distinct places with their distinct histories into contact with each other?
This project is supported by the Hong Kong Research Grant Council’s Early Career Grant 2024-2025 (project no. 24612523).
Several poems have been published, and I’ve presented this work in exhibitions and at conferences in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Toronto, Amsterdam, and Portland, Oregon.
