Pictures From Another World

What is left of people once a fully digitised world collapses?

This project starts with a thought experiment: In a dystopian future, humans have almost entirely destroyed the environment, and the last beautiful landscapes are out of reach for most. People escape into virtual reality instead, until nature survives only as a myth. Then the power grid fails. In the chaos of the blackout, those who lived mostly in a digital parallel world long for a place of refuge. One of them sifts through the remains and builds, with the simplest means, what people once understood as nature: a helmet-shaped adaptation of a VR headset.

The story draws on Plato's allegory of the cave. The inhabitants of this world don't long for a nature they never knew, but for the best state they do know: virtual reality. The project also tries to think a digital medium in an analogue context.

The result is a plaster helmet into which photographs can be slid. Sized and positioned to fill almost the entire field of vision, like a VR headset, they shut out the outside world and make you feel as if you were in a cave. A hand-cranked dynamo torch lights the images from within, so the light has to be generated by the viewer. The photographs show places that might be missed in a later age. The project is an ongoing collection, meant to grow into an archive of such places.