A new VR exhibit at the Carnegie Museum of Art gives us a glimpse of dystopias in our near future.
Styles and Customs of the 2020s, developed by New York studio Scatter and art collective DIS, transports you to fictional landscapes with four separate 3 minute experiences.
It presents “a digital dystopia inflected by rapid climate change, social unrest, and shifting global economics,” reads a Carnegie Museum of Art blog post.
The creators of the experience used 3D photographic techniques to scan real world objects and make digital representations of them. Users start out in an “ancient cave” and then travel through time to see the events that brought humanity into decline.
Scenes include “space-steading billionaires, sound-canceling isolation bubbles, water crises, and killer drones clad in artisanal Tuscan leather,” the blog post said.
The experience is so convincing that some guests even reach out to try and touch virtual objects, PennLive.com reports.
But in real life, guests are surrounded by a mashup of plaster architecture models from different western cultures in the museum’s Hall of Architecture. Red tape, visible in VR, keeps visitors in a small area.
The exhibit runs until Sept. 4 at the Carnegie Museum of Art’s Hall of Architecture in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
You can watch a preview below.
Image Credit: Carnegie Museum of Art
