Exactly ten years ago, I decided to make a virtual reality application. I did not know Unity. I did not know C#. I learned enough of both in approximately two weeks and built Window to the World—to the best of my knowledge, the first Romanian VR application released on a public app store. The application is still listed on the Meta Store: https://www.meta.com/experiences/window-to-the-world/977682772321493/ But the project did not begin with VR. It began years earlier with photography and a simple frustration: a photograph could preserve light, colour, composition and detail, but it could not fully preserve the physical sensation of being there.
Photography Without a Drone
In 2013, I started experimenting with ways of giving my photographs depth and movement. I did not own a drone, and consumer drones were not yet ordinary photographic tools. If I wanted a camera movement through one of my landscapes, I could not simply return to Iceland, France or Bulgaria and fly through the scene. So I tried to reconstruct that movement from the photograph itself. I separated the images into elements, recreated the areas hidden behind foreground objects, built approximate geometry in 3ds Max, projected the original photographs onto it and added reflections, displacement, animated water and camera movement. It was not the usual two-dimensional parallax effect made from a few flat layers. The photographs became limited three-dimensional environments. They still worked only within a restricted range of movement, but inside that range the camera existed in something closer to an actual space. I documented the process here: https://aurelm.com/2013/12/15/fernweh-3d-parallax-photography-tutorial/
I created Me, the Puzzle from a deeply personal place.
I live with bipolar disorder, and one of the ways I experience it is through a fragmented sense of identity. Different emotional states can feel like different versions of myself, each holding its own memories, perceptions, and relationship with the world. When those states change, continuity does not always come naturally. I often feel as if I am trying to reconstruct myself from pieces that no longer fit together as easily as they once did.
My memory is fragmented as well. Experiences remain with me unevenly: some are vivid, others incomplete, and some feel almost inaccessible. At the same time, I have aphantasia—the inability to voluntarily form mental images. I cannot simply close my eyes and clearly picture myself, a place, or a memory. For me, remembering and rebuilding an internal sense of self is less like replaying a film and more like assembling something from scattered traces.
That is where the idea for Me, the Puzzle came from.
The application uses your phone’s camera to turn your live reflection into a shattered puzzle. Instead of reconstructing an abstract photograph, you reconstruct yourself in real time. Every piece contains part of the camera image, moving with depth, light, distortion, chromatic aberration, reflections, and occasional digital glitches. As the pieces connect, the fragmented image gradually becomes whole again.
