This Wednesday, I visited an event for Visions and Voices called “Urban Visions: Art as a Social Practice,” a artistic gallery that focused on exhibiting the Los Angeles city life in relation to communities.
When I first walked into the gallery, I saw many people crowded around the center tables (with the food!) socializing. However, towards the sides of the room, I saw many exhibits and booths. All the four exhibits were centered on interactive media that showed all walks of life living in the city.
One exhibit I tried out had this goggle called “Oculus” which basically takes your cranial movement and uses it to show you a virtual reality inside the goggles while you are being “put” in the scene. The man running the booth explained to me that a cinematic arts grad student made this immersive journalism video project completely constructed of 3-D models and voice actors. The goggles showed a recounting of an event that happened in front of a Church in Downtown LA while waiting in line for food bank that the church was serving to the homeless. One homeless man, a diabetic, lacking food and sugar, faints in line while waiting, and the experience goes through the reaction of the crowd and the calling of an ambulance. The exhibit aimed to show a critical problem in LA where the lines for the food bank are extremely long and issues like this come up.
What was especially cool about this exhibit is that the recounting felt so real – while the 3D figures were clearly animated, having the 3D vision was quite incredible to experience. I could look around in 360 degrees, and I really felt like I was there. Ambient background noise of the city, family chatter, and sirens made up the typical LA afternoon. With the extra voice actor specifically for the 9-1-1 call, I felt even more immersed in the setting.
Since I do not typically experience events such as this, I thought it was a unique way to bring a viewer into such a setting.
Other exhibits included one of a mapping of areas to eat healthy in South LA.
Overall it was an eye-opening and unique experience which I really enjoyed. The mixture of artwork to discover the surrounding areas of LA compounded with the evidence of how much research and time went into these pieces is very commendable.
Thought Bubble 