Sandbags and The Garden of Earthly Delights
After looking at the photograph of Kiribati's sandbag walls. It felt incredibly empowering to see people going this far to protect there own land. I remember looking at how London pavements in parks have black railings along the side, to prevent people from going on the grass. I felt conceptually that it would be interesting to replace the railings in my park with Sandbags. Ideologically people associate sandbags with defence, and war. Sandbags are used in war zones for protection. It seems like that due to the anthropocene. We are now at war with rising sea levels, and as we created this problem, we are at war with ourselves perhaps.
As you walk forward through this path, your first encounter is "The Garden of Earthly Delights" by Hieronymus Bosch. I felt this was an appropriate opening to explain the state of our planet. We are currently in-between the second and third panel, We haven't come to catastrophe yet, but that is where we are going. I strongly felt sound was important to make this experience feel uneasy and uncomfortable. So I had the voice of Leonardo DiCaprio explain the painting as you walk towards it. He tells you a general understanding of what is happening, and why it relates to us now. I've shown research through this work by appropriating the audio directly from "Before The Flood" documentary, by National Geographic and Leonardo DiCaprio.
Sandbags
Grey Icebergs and Greenland
I wanted to place Grey Icebergs around the area as you walk through the space. It feels like they shouldn't be there, it feels wrong. But they are there. You know something doesn't feel right as you see the Icebergs are grey. But this is whats happening right now. My Inspiration for this came from Olafur Eliason's Installation of melting ice at the Tate Modern. Icebergs in Greenland are losing there colour and turning grey and melting away into the sea. These Icebergs are small, and they're spread out, symbolising how fragile they are, how fragile the environment is.
As you walk down the path, you eventually come to an Iceberg with melting water. As you approach it, you begin to hear the voice of Jason Box. The Professor from Before The Flood that tells us about the melting ice of Greenland. The Wet Floor sign has been inspiration from the Wet Floor sign that Tyler Bridges photographed in a New Orleans hotel, his photograph created a sense of irony. I wanted to replicate this irony into my world with an Iceberg that is melting. Soon, all of the floor will be wet, and we will no longer be able to stand.
Underwater Houses Flooding // Manila Flooding
These houses have no cultural symbolism. This is because I wanted the viewer to interpret what they see.
Originally I wanted to show houses underwater to symbolise that this is your home, and soon it will be like this. Soon due to these rising sea levels, what you call home, won't exist no more. However I came across the stories of flooding in Manila, The Philippines. I remember watching videos of seeing the families literally losing there homes, being underwater like the houses are in my VR world. Their voices of crying for help struck my soul hard. Imagine working so hard for so little, then losing it all. I created the space so that the closer you walk towards the water along the path, the louder you hear these screams and cries from the Filipino people. With surround sound headphones on, you can hear the noises directly coming from the houses. From experience, to me, this feels very depressing to experience.
Two Ways to See This Piece
So the Ideology of this piece is a combination of two ideals, you can look at this and see it as your home in the future, the one that you will lose due to rising sea levels. Or perhaps you listen to the people of Manila crying and screaming, seeing that this is actually something which is happening now. These are the homes they are losing.
Droughts and Rising Sea Levels
Sea Levels are rising, but the increasing temperatures in the atmosphere is also causing lakes and small-seas to dry out. On the left we have a satallite Diagram by Nasa. They captured photographs of the Aral Sea, and compared how it has dried out over the years. Typically Human Rubbish and Waste has caused death of sea life. Animals in the ocean will chew, swallow, and choke on plastic and inedible items that are in the sea.
I wanted to combine these two ideas into a 3D piece in my VR world. Here I have a big black bin bag, blocking the water from getting to the fish, the result is the drying out of the water, and all the fish die. I'm planning to place plastic items in the dried out Side of the river. So ironically as the earlier part of the VR world focuses on rising sea levels, this piece flips the ideas upside down and shows the devastating effects of what happens when fish eat and chew plastic, and what happens when seas and lakes dry out.
Aral Sea Photo Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZwLTJroLpE
Prototype 3 Experience
Below I have screen recorded, and shown 10 clips which take you through the VR world. These are in order from 1-10. I was unable to upload one big video to workflow due to the 50mb limit, so I've split them into 10 clips.
Why I've used other 3D objects.
These 3D objects, where have they come from you may ask? Did you photo scan all these? My answer is of course not. Due to the time limit I have with this project, I wouldn't have the time to complete this project if I were to create all the objects myself. I started this project as a big experiment because I had no experience of Virtual Reality, 3D Modelling, Unity, or Xcode at all. I had to learn this all from scratch while I was creating this world. As time has passed, I've decided to use royalty free 3D models from the Unity Asset Store and SketchFab. I had spent a lot of time to photoscan with Blender and other softwares and I couldn't get anything good at all. This will the only choice I felt I've had left. So although I've had to compromise due to the time limit of the unit, I've still been able to build a world and communicate ideas through that world,