Interview with FlowersRite花之祭: Part 1
Part of the "VR is Alive" Spotlight Series, Season Two
: For this interview (previously held in partnership with the Glitches.VR Collective) I am fortunate to join FlowersRite花之祭P in The Great Inventor Escape, one of their multiple interactive worlds in VRChat…
: First I just want to let you introduce yourself including your pronouns and what you want the audience to know about you.
I'm FlowersRite. I don't really have pronouns, but you can just use they/them, which is fine for me. I'm a music writer and a 3D artist. I make worlds and experiences in VRChat. I’ve been writing music for 12 years, and I've been modeling for five years after I started playing VRChat.
Wow that's awesome! I'm excited to hear that. Can you explain your name and where it comes from?
My name actually originates from...there's a piece called The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky. I wanted to call myself Rite of Flowers, but it's way too long, so I shortened it to FlowersRite花之祭P, basically. The Chinese part of my name is the literal translation of the English part, and it is also the name I go by for my music channel on BiliBili, which is the Chinese version of YouTube.
Can you tell me about your introduction to and earliest memory of social VR?
About five years ago, I came across a video about VRChat on YouTube, and I was immediately drawn into it. I didn't know that VR had become really accessible to consumers, and I was always looking for immersion when it comes to gaming and experiences. I actually went to a VR arcade the very next day, and then I bought one hour of playtime, and then I spent an entire hour in the tutorial environment. I was just looking down to my hand, and just blown away by the technology. I remember when I left the place, I went to a local electronics store and bought a HTC Vive on the way home. Going from what I knew about VR, to getting a VR headset and full-body tracking took me less than two days.
In regards to specific worlds, what are the earliest worlds you remember from your time in the very beginning?
My earliest? When I started playing VRChat, I was basically just learning and building worlds right away. I remember the first world I built was Flowers Grand Library, and I was using a plugin called ProBuilder, which I do not recommend because it's really hard compared to Blender. After I started using Blender, it was actually so much easier than I thought. But yeah, I built that entire world at the time using ProBuilder.
How did you become interested in music and music composition?
I actually started doing music way earlier than doing anything in 3D. I played piano as a kid. I think 12 years ago when Yamaha announced a Chinese Vocaloid singer, her name was Luo Tianyi. That's when I wanted to give it a try, start making my own music, and upload it to Bilibili. But yeah, that's how I started making music.
That's cool. I'm excited to hear more about your journey and curious about the different instruments you play. So you started with piano?
Of course, yeah, I started on piano. I played piano for around 10 years until I started making music. I still play piano, but I don't really play them as much. I mainly use piano as a tool to write music. When you have 88 keys, you have the complete freedom of doing all kinds of improvisations. That's also how I write my music. I do improvisation on the keyboard, then I record them in a DAW, and then make them into music. After piano, I learned violin and cello by myself because I didn't take any summer courses during university. I just spent all the time learning all the skills. I learned violin, cello, and Irish whistle as well. I can't play really well, but I can play some basic tunes.
What inspired you to create worlds in social VR?
I would say it's the limited possibility when it comes to art. I always feel limited when making music because I've always been a storyteller. I wanted to tell stories through music as well. Even if I'm writing an instrumental piece, I want my listeners to feel like they're on a journey. When I learned about VRChat, I learned that you can actually make so much more with your art. It basically unlocked so many possibilities. It's not a fast-screen music video anymore. You can make so much more. Another thing is immersion, as I mentioned before. Immersion is what I look for when it comes to experiences. I remember playing Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 nonstop as a kid because I got to create my own worlds and be immersed in it. When I discovered VRChat, I was blown away by the fact that it gives you 100% freedom to create worlds and explore them with friends even while being in a custom avatar as well. It basically ticks all of the boxes for me.
What do you enjoy the most about social VR and what do you think could be better about it?
Again, I enjoy the freedom of creating whatever I want in VRChat. I think it's a perfect platform for me to deliver my messages and my stories as well through my art and experiences. I also enjoy the social aspects and being able to interact with people from all over the world. For lack of a better word, social VR has such an OP ability when it comes to language learning. One fun fact is that I learned most of my English here in VRChat. Before VRChat, I couldn't even speak properly and I could barely communicate with people. In the early years of playing VRChat, I met some French people. Through them, I met more French people, picked up French words and then started being able to speak French as well later on. Sometimes I could even pass as a French person when I talk to French people!
Wow! I’m curious about which language you started with picking up more English first and then going into French more. Which language did you start exploring from?
My native tongue is Chinese. And for Chinese speakers, English is actually really hard for us because English is so different from Chinese. And also I think it's the same for English speakers. When they're trying to learn Chinese, it is really difficult for them because it's very different. But yeah, when I started playing VRChat, I got to practice my English more. I could just be proactive and just go to different communities and talk to people. And for a language learner, VRChat has endless resources basically. It really helped my English to improve a lot.
I guess once you picked up more English, was French easier to kind of get into? How's the journey from language to language?
I learned English first. And then there was like a summer break for me. So when I started, I was trying to learn more skills along with instruments. But yeah, then I just decided to learn French. And it turned out to be so much easier than I thought. Because when you know English, since French is very similar to English, when you're learning French, it is so much easier as compared to a Chinese speaker who does not speak English at all. But yeah, then I just started learning French as well.
I noticed that you explore multiple genres and subjects in the worlds you’ve created in VRChat, whether that’s scary worlds like Mayfly or educational worlds like The Great Inventor Escape or musical experiences like Children of the Seed. What inspires you to explore these topics through world-building?
Because all the worlds I made were inspired by really different things. It's really hard for me to narrow it down to what exactly inspired me. I guess it all comes down to what I feel like during particular phases in my life. And it also comes down to when I have the urge to want people to feel the same thing in that particular phase in my life. And even though there are different genres in my world, I think I keep one thing consistent, which is I want people to feel like they're on a journey. Just like my music, because I've always been a storyteller. I just want people to be on a journey, no matter what genre of the world it is.
Speaking of Children of the Seed, I’d like to congratulate you on the Raindance Immersive Award for Musical Experience! Can you describe the journey and inspiration behind this experience? How long did it take to create?
That's actually a really long story. First of all, the entirety of the production took me one month to create. The music part took me two weeks, and the world part took me two weeks as well. My boss was actually pretty chill with me working on the world while at work. I was really lucky that I got to work on some of the modeling part at work. If I just worked on everything after work, it would have taken me maybe two months entirely.
I’m curious about whether you wanted the audience to have their own vision of what the different segments of that experience was or if there's a specific meaning to this section and that section. Is it one or the other or both?
Actually, the different sections of the piece are like as if you're watching a movie and then those are different scenes I want people to experience basically. Children of the Seed is based on a fictional world that I created. When I say world, I don't mean like a VRChat world, but more like a lore that I created. It is a world where the Seed is the ultimate beginning of all existence. People have fear about the Seed, yet they cherish it. It's a world where everything arises from. Also, as I told the audience during Q&As, it's also my interpretation of monism in philosophy. I can’t say I'm really knowledgeable on philosophy, but this one theory really stood out to me. Basically, whether it be the one mind in idealistic monism or the single substance from materialistic monism, there exists an ultimate oneness where everything arises from. In other words, you are me and I am also you. I found this message really beautiful and inspiring. This is the story behind Children of the Seed.
I'm curious about the different versions of Children of the Seed because you made a version for YouTube. Were you intending it to show up like that or just have different options?
Initially, I just wanted to have a VR world to be the ultimate form of this piece. And then I wanted to upload the experience to YouTube so that people who missed it could watch it as well. But I realized that a flat screen video wouldn't take advantage of the virtual venue that I created in VR. So I ended up remaking a separate visual with drawings and sketches to make it into a video. It's like an American storybook kind of style to better suit a video form. I would say the “music video” of Children of the Seed is actually closer to my original vision of the piece because I got to provide more context to my drawings and illustrations. It's like a visual novel as well, but I'm telling the story with my music instead of words.
Part Two of my interview with FlowersRite花之祭P is available here.