Mother Tongue — ARIA ZHANG

Role

VR Developer
Interviewer

Responsibility

Assist interview and narrative design
Build grey box for code testing
Build final 3D environment + add stylized shader
Conduct user test + iterate

💠Motivation

Passing down mother language to younger generations is a universal problem during migration. However, it’s even more shocking that the language most British Bangladeshi speak has been mislabeled as Bengali for decades. They are actually speaking an endangered language - Sylheti.

To raise public awareness and call for preservation, we aspire to create an immersive experience that serves as a voice for those whose stories may not have been adequately told.

💠Final Film

💠Research

Interview
We released call-out sheet on social media to collect personal stories from British Bangladeshi community and interviewed scholars and activists in the linguistic field to ensure narrative authenticity.

💠Design Process

Narrative + Moodboard
Our story begins in the UK, where users play the role of a second-generation immigrant whose family speaks Sylheti. Boarding a cruise ship from a British port, the player embarks on a journey to explore their ancestral roots through three sequential scenes: the cruise ship, a monument square, and a village in Sylhet.
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(Midjourney was applied for moodboard generation.)
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