VR project uses hand tracking to turn grief into a puzzle, built on Taiwanese folk belief

Taiwanese director Hsin Hsuan Yeh's VR project The River Within You uses hand tracking to make audiences physically participate in grief. A single seated viewer, in the perspective of a grandmother who has just died, solves puzzles helping her granddaughter through bereavement. The premise draws on a Taiwanese folk belief that tears shed onto the deceased can trap the soul, preventing its rest (Variety, 3 September 2026).