Patricia Urquiola and Federico Pepe's VR Experience at Fuorisalone

At the 2018 Fuorisalone in Milan, designer Patricia Urquiola and creative Federico Pepe, in collaboration with Spanish studio Six N. Five, presented 'Don't Treat Me Like an Object,' a virtual reality experience. Using Asus mixed reality headsets and engineered by Proxima Milano, the project transformed Le Dictateur into an immersive environment where objects designed by the duo interacted with visitors. The VR world, described as a planet without rules or memory, offered ten-minute sessions to a limited number of guests. Andrea Masera of Proxima Milano noted the challenge of creating a neural network that learned from human movements to make object reactions natural. Urquiola described the project as approaching VR from a curiosity for an alternate reality where objects, architectures, and landscapes evolve freely. Pepe stated that objects have always carried human thought and may one day have their own independent or subjugated intelligence.