Summary.
This is a first review of an installation that consisted of a chain of activities designed to make the participants feel empathy for the condition of the #Unsozials. To feel like an #Unsozial means to become aware of the negative impacts of the neoliberal policies and globalization on our freedoms an individual sovereignty. The details of the social, political, technical, and cultural motivations and research that back this project can be read on this paper: How to be #Unsozials.
#Unsozials is a representation of a utopian neoliberal paradox consisting of the interplay between optics, sensors, video mapping and live interactive audiovisual composition. It’s an installation that explores audience engagement implementing the IPOP methodology used in museum installations around the world.
#Unsozials is storytelling in a nontraditional format. It aims to integrate participants, letting them take part in the plot by means of digital media in a natural environment, leading to future implementation of seamless mixed reality and context-aware experiences in serious gaming.
Elaboration.
The utopian science in fiction background concept and narrative go as follows:
By the year 2050, humans will start experiencing a rare evolutionary shift amidst the most profound neoliberal-economic crisis in human history. Unregulated food industry, e.g. transgenics, pesticides and animal mistreatment will have its consequences on global health. A large and non-precedented growing number of us will be suffering some form of perceptual dysfunction related to cardiovascular diseases. The most common dysfunction will be space neglect, a condition which causes varying degrees of visual, auditory or memory perception changes due to brain lesion caused by a stroke. Structural changes will be made to the built environment of urban areas, where 66% of the population live, in order to make wayfinding and interaction possible. However, people with insufficient financial resources will suffer additional disabilities due to strain on the spinal cord, inflicted by continuous abnormal movements, or by accidents resulting from abnormal interaction with the surrounding environment. All physical aspects set aside, a deeper phenomenon will go unnoticed.
Wireless sound reactive mapping on seamless surroundings.
Social control exerted by corporations through the governments and media, had grown highly specialized and effective until now. Achieving conformity and homogeneity in the 21st century societal thinking, made the population willingly give up their privacy rights to businesses. This mechanism had been more efficient to manage human behavior, than regulating it with laws or, even more importantly, with education. But the systematic standardization of belief systems through mass media, e.g. internet 3.0, movies, religion, etc. no longer worked.
With an increasing population among every social status experiencing perceptual shifts, the understanding of social interaction changed as well. Governments had been keen on making people look the other way, but not this way. So far humans had polarized opinions, they could be divided and easily controlled. Every belief system leads to that local contained homogeneity of thought (packaging of belief systems), instead of a global multipolar diverse thinking. But this new breed of humans started to challenge inner structures. Fragmented disparity within homogeneous local control, is a problem for governments trying to spread globalization. It’s the ultimate organic conflict within a system. It’s the natural and perpetual fight for freedom.
How would #Unsozials make a difference in social control and networked structures?
#Unsozials are disconnected, unconcerned, unembodied human cells of disperse thinking who defy networked social control structures. They are a product of the unregulated food industry and chemical wastes which caused perceptual disfunctions related to brain lesions and cardiovascular diseases, e.g. hemi spatial neglect.
Yoked prisms visual field displacement to simulate spatial neglect.
Participants interacting with each other and with the reactive environment.
Discussion and Further Work:
The first pilot presentation of #Unsozials showed a positive reaction of participants. Many questions about the yoked prism glasses, spatial neglect, and concerns about privacy in the current and future digitized world were raised. The audience feedback was congruent with the IPOP implementation and left the following guidelines for further development:
- Interaction with projection mapping and sensors is effective, but does not involve touch. A higher degree of immersion can be achieved by implementing mixed reality and tangible interfaces. A custom application will be developed to allow the participants use their phones as an additional tool to interact with the installation. The use of Augmented Reality Head Mounted Devices (HMD) will be analysed.
- The plot will be adapted so the activities performed by the participants evolve in a serious game with goals that allow self awareness of the social and political issues discussed in this project.
At the moment two technical approaches are being worked on.
- Human Activity recognition (HAR) by implementing a machine learning classification model on an Inertial Measurment Unit (IMU).
- Augmented Reality (AR) implementation on low cost HMD.
