ALL YOU SURVEY- an immersive narrative-in-progress
“I am monarch of all I survey;
My right there is none to dispute;
From the centre all round to the sea
I am lord of the fowl and the brute.
O Solitude! where are the charms
That sages have seen in thy face?
Better dwell in the midst of alarms,
Than reign in this horrible place.”
-William Cowper: "The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk"
The project emerged from my research into making sonic sculptures based on field recordings made in New York City.
Yankee Stadium, 2:34pm, April 04, 2016
This work led me to explore 3D mapping of the body- creating a virtual identity that's rooted in real life.
3D mapped face
3D printed faces
I realized that I was seeking a way to bridge the space between the physical and virtual- that play between the two. Can I create an immersive experience that will be compelling and also have a sense of physical presence? I found the solution in 'old media': stereographic photography. 3D imagery is the ancestor of contemporary Virtual Reality: sometimes the ’new’ in media is often simply the return of ‘old’ repudiated media, deployed to re-invigorate advertising and mainstream industrial cinema. This technology is also a perfect fit for screen-based immersive experiences.
Afro-Punk festival 2017
Mong Kok, Hong Kong (hotel views), Stereophotos, 2017
I’m in the production phase of “All You Survey”, a narrative/ essay project which will explore tourism through photographic and audio technologies. Some questions I hope to engage with the piece include: What is the role of photography and sound in rendering a real, lived place into a tourist ‘destination’? How might photographic technologies- in particular ‘spectacular’ technologies such as stereo photography, 360 degree video, and VR contribute to a larger process of (historically) colonialism and (contemporaneously) urban displacement by rendering locations or communities hyperreal, exotic, strange? Beginning with the post-WWII stereo photography craze and continuing through the Viewmaster brand and on to today’s utopian VR landscape, I want to use the lenses of ethnographic media as well as tourism studies and the psychology of 3D and immersive image and sound consumption to lead a viewer/listener on a first-person perspective journey into exploring these questions through the spectacular media technologies of VR, AR, and 360 video and sound.
My right there is none to dispute;
From the centre all round to the sea
I am lord of the fowl and the brute.
O Solitude! where are the charms
That sages have seen in thy face?
Better dwell in the midst of alarms,
Than reign in this horrible place.”
-William Cowper: "The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk"
The project emerged from my research into making sonic sculptures based on field recordings made in New York City.
This work led me to explore 3D mapping of the body- creating a virtual identity that's rooted in real life.
I realized that I was seeking a way to bridge the space between the physical and virtual- that play between the two. Can I create an immersive experience that will be compelling and also have a sense of physical presence? I found the solution in 'old media': stereographic photography. 3D imagery is the ancestor of contemporary Virtual Reality: sometimes the ’new’ in media is often simply the return of ‘old’ repudiated media, deployed to re-invigorate advertising and mainstream industrial cinema. This technology is also a perfect fit for screen-based immersive experiences.
I’m in the production phase of “All You Survey”, a narrative/ essay project which will explore tourism through photographic and audio technologies. Some questions I hope to engage with the piece include: What is the role of photography and sound in rendering a real, lived place into a tourist ‘destination’? How might photographic technologies- in particular ‘spectacular’ technologies such as stereo photography, 360 degree video, and VR contribute to a larger process of (historically) colonialism and (contemporaneously) urban displacement by rendering locations or communities hyperreal, exotic, strange? Beginning with the post-WWII stereo photography craze and continuing through the Viewmaster brand and on to today’s utopian VR landscape, I want to use the lenses of ethnographic media as well as tourism studies and the psychology of 3D and immersive image and sound consumption to lead a viewer/listener on a first-person perspective journey into exploring these questions through the spectacular media technologies of VR, AR, and 360 video and sound.
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