The Recorder VR - an immersive art photography experience

We are setting out to create a VR experience that explicitly aims to provoke the user. To create a VR artwork in itself, using real world photographic and audio assets.

The experience will transport the user through a curated set of photography and audio, creating a sense of the photographer's work, and their concepts and narratives behind it.

We have collaborated with renowned cinematographer Tim Cragg, [http://www.timcragg.com/] taking his still photographic work to create a multi sensory experience that conveys the concepts and emotion behind the sequences of images. The photographic imagery is accompanied by soundscapes made from field recordings by the artist that have been mixed and edited to reinforce the emotional power of the imagery.

By taking the photography and audio compositions and conveying the sense of each set in a visceral, confrontational manner that the user cannot ignore, we aim to create an experience that is transformational for the user. Using the capability of the VR environment to create atmosphere and trigger emotion, but also to break physical ‘reality’ rules, we think we can create something that will prove disruptive in the world of fine art.

We see the open ended nature of the evolving VR space as providing huge potential for art experiences. The transition from flat screen, or print, to 360º space allows photography to be presented in a way that in entirely different to its traditional enclosures and restrictions. Using flat imagery in the 360º environment brings up a welcome new set of constraints and challenges, and forces the viewer to look at the images in new ways with new levels of detail.

The experience will take the user on a journey through three curated sets of Tim Cragg’s photography. They will be presented with imagery in different methods and environments.

The user’s gaze interaction will effect their experience; as images morph and deteriorate when in line of sight, as images travel past the user which vanish when brought into focus, and when sets of images are transitioned from one to the next. Elements of the experience are randomised, so that the user will get a different set of content each time the experience is run.

We want the user to come away from the VR experience with a relationship and understanding of the creative intent behind the concepts within Tim Cragg’s work, and to recall the images and spaces they have been in with an emotional intensity.