10.000 Moving Cities VR

Are we living in a globalised world that is becoming increasingly homogeneous? Languages, plant and animal species are continuously decreasing. Supermarkets, buildings and cities look more and more alike. Technological progress is accelerating this process. Fast means of transport and communication such as airplanes, satellites and the Internet enable ever faster and apparently more comprehensive access to information.


BACKGROUND
10.000 Moving Cities – Same but Different, Mobile App deals with urbanization and globalization in the digital age. The user navigates through an urban environment of his choice. The landscape is constantly reshaped and redefined by posts on the social networks Freesound, Instagram and Twitter. Here these personal impressions are streamed in real time like windows to our changing world. The viewer participates in the social movements of our time and makes a virtual journey into constantly new image and sound collages in which one experiences local, cultural and linguistic differences and similarities. In virtual space, this information is visualized on cubes that rise at different heights to become a kind of skyline. The work deals with how our cities are continuously changing and increasingly resemble one. This results in more and more non-places/places of lost places in the sense of Marc Augé’s book and essay Non-Places, which could exist all over the world without any true local identity (such as motorways, hotel rooms, airports or supermarkets).


INTERACTION
The user can pick a city or searches for its hashtag. Associated social media posts are searched by geolocation or hashtag and transferred to the virtual world.
The user navigates the virtual environment with the animations on display following his moves across the installation space. The virtual environment can be navigated in every direction. The virtual environment would rotate as the participant rotates the device with the sky showing up if the tablet is moved upwards. By tilting it downwards the ground appears. At the same time, the flight direction is adjusted and the flight speed can be changed. The sound is responsive and reacts to the movements and flight speed of the participant.


CREDITS
Marc Lee, Antonio Zea(VR Developer), Florian Faion (VR Developer) and Shervin Saremi (Sound)


SUPPORTED BY
- Pro Helvetia
- Migros-Kulturprozent
- Kanton Zürich, Fachstelle Kultur

WEBSITE
http://marclee.io/en/same-but-different/