Photoshoot: Virtual Reality Culture Jam

This semester has been a little lacking in media arts project opportunities, but I have been able to stretch my creative arms quite a bit with a project for my Meta-Media class.

The idea for this project basically landed itself in my lap while I was attending Creator Day at Buffer Festival 2015 in Toronto. A representative from Google was speaking about the newly released Google 360 video and the handheld device Google Cardboard. The resulting virtual reality experience is through stereoscopic technology. This caught my attention as we had discussed traditional stereoscopes in class just the week prior. I began thinking about how these technologies seem to reinvent - or remediate - themselves every 50 years or so, but are marketed as the 'newest tech of the future'.

I chose to create a culture jammed advertising campaign from three different eras: the late 1800's (when the stereoscope was first distributed widely), the mid 1950's (when the View Master became a popular family item), and present day (when Google 360 & Cardboard are being released). I then opted to swap around what technologies were represented in each era. For example, View Master being advertised in the 1800's, Google Cardboard in the 1950's, and the stereoscope in 2015.

This led to quite the challenge for my skills in photo manipulation and design.

Firstly, I had to research the 'look' I wanted for each set of advertisements I would be making. Advertisements in the late 1800's were largely text-based, with a wide range of type-sets. Often illustrations with elaborate borders would accompany them as well. As photography was introduced, the images were very stoic, as often subjects would have to stay still for a long period of time for the photographer. Subjects either stood in front of a blank wall or drapes, or would sit quite stiffly in a chair. To recreate this look, I didn't have to go further than stopping by my grandparents' home to find the perfect set.

With the help of an assistant, I was able to dress in a vintage travelling dress from the turn of the century (owned by my great-great-grandmother), and we got to work.

The post-production editins has been quite heaving with these images. Taking them from digital colour photos, to sepia-toned grainy images.

For the 1950's era photos, my sister had enough costume parts lying around to come up with a classic look quite quickly. Again we were able to use the natural dress of my grandparent's house to set the scene. By the 1950's, cameras had developed significantly, and we were able to capture her youthful excitement. Poses were still exaggerated in advertising campaigns of the time and so we were very careful with her arm placement and facial expressions.

Finally, for a present-day advertisement, I wanted it to stand out as something completely different from the other two. While there are an infinite number of styles of advertising today, I drew inspiration from computer and 'gadgetry' technology ads. It was very quickly apparent that today's advertisements take a minimalist approach, creating a sense of mystery around products. Aesthetic design is symmetrical and from the inspiration that 'less is more'. When creating these photos, we kept it to straight on shots and profile shots of the subject in clean and simple poses.

As this project is still ongoing, I do not have all of my final designs posted yet, but stay tuned as I can't wait to show them once they are all complete!