28784
Multidisciplinary project combining a contextualisation landing page with a navigable and immersive virtual reality environment prototype, focused on the worldview of the Achuar people of the Ecuadorian Amazon.
Adriana Endara Vega
Jorge Esteban Blein
Design, Master's degree in Lifelong Learning in Digital Graphic Design Online
2026
WAKAN is a multidisciplinary system comprising a contextualisation landing page and a navigable, immersive virtual environment prototype dedicated to the worldview of the Achuar people of the Ecuadorian Amazon. The project takes the term wakan — meaning soul or spirit in Achuar culture — as its conceptual focus and explores the animist ontology of this people, in which humans and non-humans maintain a relationship of continuity that challenges the Western separation between nature and culture.
The main challenge is to communicate the worldview of an Indigenous Amazonian people with care, rigour and ethical responsibility, avoiding cultural appropriation and technological sensationalism. The project had to translate a complex animist ontology, in which there is no separation between nature and culture, into an immersive experience that could be understood by a Western audience, fostering intercultural empathy in the face of deforestation and other threats.
The inspiration stems from the author’s family experience in the Ecuadorian Amazon and the Achuar concept of wakan (soul/spirit). On a theoretical level, the project draws on Philippe Descola’s anthropology and his work on animism and relationships between humans and non-humans, as well as the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance. As immersive references, the project explored Awavena, Collisions, Assent and 360 On-Country, alongside The Displaced by NYT VR as a counterexample. It also echoes Chris Milk’s idea that “virtual reality is the ultimate empathy machine.”
Adobe Illustrator and Figma
Development of the visual identity and interface design.
Visualisation and construction of the virtual reality environment.
AI-assisted web implementation.
3D model generation and Gemini as a tool for researching references.
Crazy 8s, storyboarding, paper prototyping and moodboarding.
