In January 2017, Tzina Dizengoff square, one of Tel Aviv’s emblematic sites, was demolished. The square became a home for the lonely and marginalized characters of the area. This project tells the story of the people who gravitated toward the square and spent their days in it. In this interactive webVR documentary, they talk about their lives and the square. Together, they form a poetic musing on lost loves and things that have passed. TZINA invites you to physically explore the virtual square, combining elements of fantasy, while experiencing the square in different times of the day.

Tzina: Symphony of Longing is WebVR documentary for the Chrome Browser / HTC Vive. It takes place on the main city square in Tel Aviv – “Dizengoff square”, also named “Tzina square”, after the wife of Tel Aviv’s first city mayor, Meir Dizengoff.

The documentary tells the story of different individuals that inhabit the square regularly, spending most of their time sitting on the benches that surround its circular structure, with the monumental fountain sculpture in its center. Different reasons led them there. They seem to be flocking to the square and merged with it in an almost symbiotic relationship, until it seems that they might be consoled by their shared loneliness at the ever-moving urban landscape. Tzina is a walking VR experience using the HTC Vive. The viewer moves the story forward by acting in the virtual world- physically walking in the virtual square and approaching the characters. It’s a fully interactive non-linear documentary. There are 50 min of documentary materials, but every session is limited to 15min(vive/desktop)

The characters were shot with Kinect in order to create a 3D body of live interviews. The viewer meets the real people while sitting alongside them in the square. There are 13 different characters, spread over 5 episodes. Each episode in the experience represents a different part of the day - from dawn to dusk, linking the episode’s protagonists to a specific theme that emerges from their personal story. Each encounter with a character combines elements of animation that depict parts of the story and detached the documentary aspect of the encounter into more fantasy one. The viewer can move between the episodes by gazing at the suns located above. Tzina is designed to be a multi-user documentary - each viewer is represented by a pigeon, walking inside the virtual square. That way the viewers can be alone, yet together in the square (just like the characters).

At the beginning of 2017 Tzina Square was demolished and then leveled down to the street’s level. For the third time in its history, change its form. Nostalgia will switch to future tense as the cavernous spaces beneath the square once again open and reveal themselves. There’s no way of telling what would come up with the people that currently occupy the space and consider it as their home. The project allows us to visit in a place that no longer exists.

Tzina is an extended invitation to go on a journey which weaves back and forth between love and loneliness, documentary and fantasy.As the film progresses, the spaces beneath the square will flood and the square itself will become a raft, liberated and unattached, a non-urban urban space. Longing can be suffocating. Liberation raises a new tide of silence.
After Tzina’s death, Meir wrote in his journal that “there are moments that swim up from the depths of the past.”

What is swimming towards you from your past?

MADE WITH THE SUPPORT OF

FEATURED IN

Created by Shirin Anlen
Development Lead Avner Peled
Design Director Ziv Schneider
Technical Director Or Fleisher
Creative coder animation Laura Juo-Hsin Chen 陳若昕
Script Editor Udi Ben-Arie
3D Modeling Kristian Tot, Gili Ron, Edvardas Kunigenas
Developement assistant Joaquín Aldunate Infante
Trees and water shaders Jukka Eerikäinen
Pigeon Animation Kristian Tot
Shot using Depth Kit
Rotoshop Munish Chaudhary
Sound Mix Aviv Mesholam
Sound design Or Fleisher
UX Expert Udi Ben-Arie
User experience consultant Shalev Moran
Dubbing Arik Bernstein, adel eldor, Alex Zamoshkin,
Judi Wald, Micha Yona, Avi Eldor, Amit Itzcar, Yigal Ben-Nun, Or Fleisher