UCL Multimedia Anthropology Lab is proud to present Multimedia Encounters, our latest exhibition and experiment created to coincide with UCL MAL’s first academic conference: Multimedia Encounters: Experimental Approaches to Ethnographic Research.

Multimedia Encounters attends to the relationship between anthropological thought and computer intelligence. Algorithms and the anthropological mind both operate recursively, dismembering knowledge as we know it, re-calculating and birthing alternative manifestations of ethnographic data. Our exhibition seeks to probe and push this formal equivalence, exploring its limits and creating new ground for future multimedia encounters.

The exhibition aims to dissect and examine our own systems of value, to re-think how knowledge is produced, and to create spaces for re-imagining what it means to be (more than) human in a 21st Century mediascape. In addition to presenting the work of conference panellists, our exhibition features work from UCL MAL’s global network of anthropologists, artists and researchers.

VIRTUAL EXHIBITION

MULTIMEDIA ENCOUNTERS

EXPERIMENTAL APPROACHES TO ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH

HOW TO NAVIGATE THE EXHIBITION

Below is an outline of the three possible linear journeys together with indications of where the portal to the next space is located. These are titled route 1, route 2 and route 3.

Each route's journey will start and end in the default ‘crater’ setting (Wade Wallerstein's Room), where you will be invited to recursively explore alternative routes. This information is also available to be downloaded in a PDF format below. However, we also encourage you to take on the challenge of locating these portals yourselves: you may find unexpected encounters...

You can also directly access the individual exhibition rooms in the descriptions below.

EXHIBITION GUIDE PDF

ENTER THE BEGINNING OF THE VIRTUAL EXHIBITION THROUGH ROOM 0

ROOM 0: Wade Wallerstein

ENTER ROOM HERE Virtual Phenomenology is an ongoing investigation into the lived experience of traveling through, inhabiting, or otherwise interacting with virtual and simulated spaces, landscapes, and software environments. Wallerstein has spent time traversing virtual environments and conducting ethnographic field research across various computer-generated realities. Wallerstein’s research is grounded by Tom Boellstorff’s assertion that the virtual is not reducible or opposed to the real; instead, the virtual is opposed to the actual. Both the virtual and the actual are very much real, but rooted in the affordances of their material singularity. Further drawing upon Christopher Tilley’s definition of phenomenology as encompassing the relationship between Being and Being in the World, this project seeks to uncover how the material affordances, aesthetic conventions, and social mechanics of commercial 3D interactive virtual worlds shape social understandings of space as well as cultural relations amongst online communities. In this iteration of Virtual Phenomenology, Wallerstein presents a selection of field note recordings inside Ghost of Tsushima, a single-player game developed by Sucker Punch Productions and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment for the PlayStation 4 system. Noted amongst gaming communities for its sharp computer-generated graphics, engaging gameplay, and hyperrealistic environments, Ghost of Tsushima presents an interesting case study in virtual landscape phenomenology in both its fantastical symbolic representation of late 13th Century Japan, high-caliber world simulation, and built-in tools for environment modulation and recording. The site-specific installation in Mozilla Hubs for Multimedia Encounters presents a kaleidoscopic view into this world, showcasing a number of overlapping videos from inside the game world recorded using virtual camera software. The overwhelming barrage of overlapping visual information displayed in this installation in turn simulate the over-stimulating and massively multiple qualities of these kinds of 3D virtual worlds, which uniquely offer opportunities for players/users/visitors/travelers to experience rapid nonlinear movement through an unimaginable number of high-fidelity environments at once. The experience engendered by these immersive imaging technologies, software environments, and gaming interfaces is ultimately one of fragmentation or context collapse.

To find the path forward, walk through the screen to the terrain beyond. You will find three portals scattered around the outskirts of this default landscape on the outside of the installation. The blue portal marks the start to route one, the purple portal is for route two, while the red portal initialises route three.

ROOM 0: Wade Wallerstein

ENTER ROOM HERE Virtual Phenomenology is an ongoing investigation into the lived experience of traveling through, inhabiting, or otherwise interacting with virtual and simulated spaces, landscapes, and software environments. Wallerstein has spent time traversing virtual environments and conducting ethnographic field research across various computer-generated realities. Wallerstein’s research is grounded by Tom Boellstorff’s assertion that the virtual is not reducible or opposed to the real; instead, the virtual is opposed to the actual. Both the virtual and the actual are very much real, but rooted in the affordances of their material singularity. Further drawing upon Christopher Tilley’s definition of phenomenology as encompassing the relationship between Being and Being in the World, this project seeks to uncover how the material affordances, aesthetic conventions, and social mechanics of commercial 3D interactive virtual worlds shape social understandings of space as well as cultural relations amongst online communities. In this iteration of Virtual Phenomenology, Wallerstein presents a selection of field note recordings inside Ghost of Tsushima, a single-player game developed by Sucker Punch Productions and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment for the PlayStation 4 system. Noted amongst gaming communities for its sharp computer-generated graphics, engaging gameplay, and hyperrealistic environments, Ghost of Tsushima presents an interesting case study in virtual landscape phenomenology in both its fantastical symbolic representation of late 13th Century Japan, high-caliber world simulation, and built-in tools for environment modulation and recording. The site-specific installation in Mozilla Hubs for Multimedia Encounters presents a kaleidoscopic view into this world, showcasing a number of overlapping videos from inside the game world recorded using virtual camera software. The overwhelming barrage of overlapping visual information displayed in this installation in turn simulate the over-stimulating and massively multiple qualities of these kinds of 3D virtual worlds, which uniquely offer opportunities for players/users/visitors/travelers to experience rapid nonlinear movement through an unimaginable number of high-fidelity environments at once. The experience engendered by these immersive imaging technologies, software environments, and gaming interfaces is ultimately one of fragmentation or context collapse.

ROOM 0: Wade Wallerstein

ENTER ROOM HERE Virtual Phenomenology is an ongoing investigation into the lived experience of traveling through, inhabiting, or otherwise interacting with virtual and simulated spaces, landscapes, and software environments. Wallerstein has spent time traversing virtual environments and conducting ethnographic field research across various computer-generated realities. Wallerstein’s research is grounded by Tom Boellstorff’s assertion that the virtual is not reducible or opposed to the real; instead, the virtual is opposed to the actual. Both the virtual and the actual are very much real, but rooted in the affordances of their material singularity. Further drawing upon Christopher Tilley’s definition of phenomenology as encompassing the relationship between Being and Being in the World, this project seeks to uncover how the material affordances, aesthetic conventions, and social mechanics of commercial 3D interactive virtual worlds shape social understandings of space as well as cultural relations amongst online communities. In this iteration of Virtual Phenomenology, Wallerstein presents a selection of field note recordings inside Ghost of Tsushima, a single-player game developed by Sucker Punch Productions and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment for the PlayStation 4 system. Noted amongst gaming communities for its sharp computer-generated graphics, engaging gameplay, and hyperrealistic environments, Ghost of Tsushima presents an interesting case study in virtual landscape phenomenology in both its fantastical symbolic representation of late 13th Century Japan, high-caliber world simulation, and built-in tools for environment modulation and recording. The site-specific installation in Mozilla Hubs for Multimedia Encounters presents a kaleidoscopic view into this world, showcasing a number of overlapping videos from inside the game world recorded using virtual camera software. The overwhelming barrage of overlapping visual information displayed in this installation in turn simulate the over-stimulating and massively multiple qualities of these kinds of 3D virtual worlds, which uniquely offer opportunities for players/users/visitors/travelers to experience rapid nonlinear movement through an unimaginable number of high-fidelity environments at once. The experience engendered by these immersive imaging technologies, software environments, and gaming interfaces is ultimately one of fragmentation or context collapse.

ROOM 0: Wade Wallerstein

ENTER ROOM HERE Virtual Phenomenology is an ongoing investigation into the lived experience of traveling through, inhabiting, or otherwise interacting with virtual and simulated spaces, landscapes, and software environments. Wallerstein has spent time traversing virtual environments and conducting ethnographic field research across various computer-generated realities. Wallerstein’s research is grounded by Tom Boellstorff’s assertion that the virtual is not reducible or opposed to the real; instead, the virtual is opposed to the actual. Both the virtual and the actual are very much real, but rooted in the affordances of their material singularity. Further drawing upon Christopher Tilley’s definition of phenomenology as encompassing the relationship between Being and Being in the World, this project seeks to uncover how the material affordances, aesthetic conventions, and social mechanics of commercial 3D interactive virtual worlds shape social understandings of space as well as cultural relations amongst online communities. In this iteration of Virtual Phenomenology, Wallerstein presents a selection of field note recordings inside Ghost of Tsushima, a single-player game developed by Sucker Punch Productions and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment for the PlayStation 4 system. Noted amongst gaming communities for its sharp computer-generated graphics, engaging gameplay, and hyperrealistic environments, Ghost of Tsushima presents an interesting case study in virtual landscape phenomenology in both its fantastical symbolic representation of late 13th Century Japan, high-caliber world simulation, and built-in tools for environment modulation and recording. The site-specific installation in Mozilla Hubs for Multimedia Encounters presents a kaleidoscopic view into this world, showcasing a number of overlapping videos from inside the game world recorded using virtual camera software. The overwhelming barrage of overlapping visual information displayed in this installation in turn simulate the over-stimulating and massively multiple qualities of these kinds of 3D virtual worlds, which uniquely offer opportunities for players/users/visitors/travelers to experience rapid nonlinear movement through an unimaginable number of high-fidelity environments at once. The experience engendered by these immersive imaging technologies, software environments, and gaming interfaces is ultimately one of fragmentation or context collapse.