Healing Inscape: Endless

Concept & Motivation

Healing Inscape: Endless is an immersive VR project by Yulin Yao that visualizes collective dreams as symbolic landscapes, exploring how social crises, such as migration struggles, cultural displacement, and generational anxieties, shape our subconscious emotional states.

Inspired by interviews with young immigrants in the Netherlands, the project collects recurring dream symbols that reveal shared feelings of uncertainty, loss of control, and cultural dislocation. By transforming these patterns into interactive virtual environments, the work invites participants to step inside these subconscious worlds, experiencing them from within. The project seeks to provide an open, poetic space where viewers can reflect on complex social and emotional realities through visual storytelling.

Process & Method

The project translates dream logic and metaphor into immersive VR, allowing what words cannot express to be felt and seen.

Using the concept of inscape, the internal landscape of the mind, and principles of catharsis from psychotherapy, subconscious imagery is reconstructed as full-scale, emotionally charged environments. Visitors navigate symbolic landscapes that embody anxiety, hope, and longing, encouraging empathy and self-reflection. The methodology combines illustration, 3D visualization, and interactive design to create experiences that are both visually compelling and emotionally resonant. By blending personal narratives with universal themes, the project bridges individual and collective experiences, making complex emotional landscapes accessible to diverse audiences.

Impact & Audience

The project is intended for those navigating identity shifts, uncertainty, or emotional fragmentation, particularly people with cross-cultural backgrounds, immigrants, and individuals affected by societal instability. At the same time, it engages anyone interested in mental health, art therapy, immersive storytelling, or digital culture.

Rather than providing answers, Healing Inscape: Endless offers a space for empathy, reflection, and emotional exploration, helping audiences recognize shared feelings, connect with others, and process complex experiences in a safe and imaginative virtual environment.