Housed within Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam, the Department of New Realities aims to explore new tech territories and how they will change our lives, including our relationships with brands. Projects created by the department so far have included the use of VR and AR to make bespoke experiences; some for brands, others just for the fun of it, to show off what’s possible.
VR and AR have of course been buzzwords in the creative industries for a while now, almost to the point of exhaustion. But what makes the Department of New Realities stand out amongst a sea of dull ‘brand experiences’ is the exuberance of their work. Whereas all too often VR has been used to corporate ends, creating replicas of the world as we know it but with the addition of a heavy headset strapped to our face, the DPTNR is determined to expand our universe with a mix of distinctive aesthetics and occasionally wild philosophical ideas.
The department is headed up by Creative Directors Geoffrey Lillemon and Anita Fontaine. The duo have worked together since meeting at the Banff New Media Institute in Canada, where they found they had a mutual desire to escape the banalities of their home towns: “Hell, USA” for Lillemon, and “the suburban sun in Australia” for Fontaine.
“Where we came from, there was a times a lack of poetry and fantasy and culture,” says Fontaine. “It was kind of a dry, post-colonial suburbia. Which is a bit disappointing when you’re coming up in society and you want to escape, and you want to experience many different worlds. We essentially needed to create our own culture, so out of the discontent we started creating, I guess at a fairly young age, out of necessity.”
Scenes from Bitmap Banshees, a VR experience where players ride through a zombie-filled Amsterdam
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Lillemon and Fontaine shared an interest in sci-fi and cyber-punk but also in video games and internet art: from the early days of their collaboration they saw the potential for these mediums to offer more than just gaming, but to be used to create alternative, fantastical worlds. “We could create artwork that was intended for online media, so you could see the artwork like it was meant to be seen, just in the comfort of your own home,” says Lillemon. “It created a certain intimacy and immersiveness that’s similar to where VR is going now.”
Armed with these ideas, the duo created the company Champagne Valentine, which Fontaine describes as “a business around the philosophy of creating fantasies for other people”.
“We basically made art for brands,” she continues, “but again merging technology and art for bespoke, one-off installations or web experiences, or films, for a lot of different fashion brands.”
Champagne Valentine was successful though came to an unexpected and somewhat abrupt end after its web domain was hijacked by a Thai dating site. “I guess we forgot to renew it for a few days,” explains Fontaine, “and that gives people a portal to do it. It was our bad, but anyway, it started us on a different trajectory.”
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Bike and VR headset for Bitmap Banshees
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The team is also aware of a sense of responsibility in creating VR experiences, and of the importance of understanding the affect the work may have on the viewer/player. This is especially the case when working with children, as they did in the experiential project Senseless Fairytale, which took participants into a fantasy world, which was part story, part game.
“It was really important with the Senseless Fairytale that we let the children direct it,” says Lillemon, “because you’re bringing them into an environment that could feel very scary, very traumatising really, if you did it in certain ways. So it was really important for us to let them have directing control over that. You have to understand who your audience is and have input from them, because you can’t be the master of everyone else’s space. Take as much input as possible, and do research and be aware that these are simulated experiences that can be very terrifying or joyful.”
Getting philosophical
While many uses of virtual reality have so far been focused on entertainment, Lillemon and Fontaine are keenly aware of the deeper potential for the tech to change our relationship with reality, in ways that may be positive or concerning. They talk about the opportunities for health applications of VR, which may allow us to view our bodies, and what they can do, differently, as well as how the use of avatars may offer the chance to step outside the social restrictions we regularly find ourselves in.
“We explored this idea of the advantages of hiding behind the veil of the avatar,” explains Lillemon. “We had a few characters, 3D virtual identities, that we would treat as real actors or actresses. So if people asked us to do something and use one character, we’d be like: ‘oh, that character’s not available, she’s on a detox in LA’. Going into these absurd scripted email dialogues, it would be a way of still communicating what you need to say, but if you put it behind an avatar you can be either super rude or super loving and nice and you can just play with multi-personality advantages. Which is really fun – you can almost say things that you would be normally too afraid, or ‘proper’ to say.”
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Corona experience in Mexico City
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“We’ve started things in the past that might be focused on apps or certain kinds of digital output that maybe were a bit late to the game, and I feel like we’ve decided to jump maybe in front of it, and go for something that’s not yet established, and that’s what’s so exciting about it,” Bernath continues.
“My hope is it becomes more and more of what we offer for our clients. And maybe even as bespoke things we make ourselves…. I see it becoming a really important part of the future and future-proofing the agency for wherever this industry goes, or whether we morph into a slightly different one over time. I mean it’s not going to happen in a year or two but maybe in ten years we’ll look a little bit different than we look right now.”
And for Lillemon and Fontaine, there is even more at stake in the need to get creating the new worlds of our future.
“We feel there’s a need to make these new realities, because if we don’t somebody else will,” concludes Lillemon. “You can either make your own reality or sit back and live in somebody else’s creation.”
Source: UNSORTED