BOUGHT/BROKEN is a film and virtual reality art experience about intimate partner violence and healing.
BOUGHT/BROKEN is an interactive, collaborative sound sculpture built in VR and experienced in an immersive multimedia environment. It is designed to support survivors of intimate partner abuse. Nearly 3 in 10 women (29%) and 1 in 10 men (10%) in the US have experienced rape, physical violence and/or stalking by a partner, according to the CDC. Collaborators Theresa Loong and Robbie Lynn Hunsinger are survivors of IPV, and have 20 years of experience creating emerging technology projects for museums and public art installations. By creating a meditative VR experience and fostering a survivor community conversation, this work promotes recovery. Our vision for the project is playful, attuned and resonant. What if an object destroyed by intimate partner abuse, loaded with pain, grief and shame, could be recovered and remade into something fused with others’ like experiences?
Theresa Loong is a New York–based director, producer, and experience designer working across documentary film, games, and immersive interactive media, including AR, VR, and mixed reality. Her character-driven and participatory work explores memory, identity, agency, and community.
Her feature documentary Every Day Is a Holiday, inspired by the discovery of her father’s World War II prisoner-of-war diary, aired on public television and screened at the Montclair Film Festival, the National Gallery of Art, Black Maria Film Festival, and Asia Society Hong Kong. She directed, produced and wrote NOVA’s Building Stuff: Change It! and created over ten games and interactive audience experiences, including for AMC’s The Walking Dead and Breaking Bad.
Theresa is directing Game On, a feature documentary about pioneering game designer Brenda Romero, and Bought/Broken, an immersive VR and multimedia project addressing intimate-partner violence and healing. She co-created Feed Me a Story, an intergenerational participatory project that gathers family recipes, oral histories, and cultural memory through film, public art, and interactive media.
A recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts grants for interactive projects, Theresa’s film and interactive work has been presented at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, Triennale di Milano, Círculo de Bellas Artes, and the New York City Transit Museum. She was also an Artist-in-Residence at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island and at LMCC Swing Space on Governors Island. She is founder of FORM360, Chair of Filmshop, and teaches Media Studies at Vassar College and Integrated Design at Parsons/The New School. Theresa holds an MFA from Hunter College and an AB with honors in Social Anthropology from Harvard University.
International Game Developers Association Foundation 2021 - Diverse Prototype Fund
Director - Theresa Loong
Co-Creator - Robbie Lynn Hunsinger
Creative Technologist - Robbie Lynn Hunsinger
