Today, me and some pals visited the Leeds City Museum to see a Virtual Reality exhibition hosted by Leeds Young Film Festival 2017 - It was basically a variety of activities that involve some aspect of Virtual Reality, including a 360 dome, and features from google expedition and google cardboard. Unfortunately all the cool activities were fully booked, but we managed to get a google cardboard headset each and book a place on Google Expeditions.
screenshot from /edu.google.com/expeditions/#how-it-works
Unfortunately I couldn't photograph the experience as we were sat in a board room with a very scary eccentric man (and all the magic was happening between our eyes and a phone screen anyway) - but basically it involved us wearing a cardboard box with a phone/screen attached to it at the other end so that the screen created an immersive experience in which we could look around a certain place in 360 degrees and be educated about certain elements in the images we saw. We were -transported- to an Orangutan sanctuary in Bornio where we learnt about the effects of deforestation. I thought this was a really exciting and unique experience, but my only issue was that it was just a still image and was still a bit disengaging. I feel that if it had subtle movements and sound effects it would've been a bit more entertaining and a lot more immersive.
Although I'm really not sure how i'd go about making a 360 degree video/animation/gif to be used within google cardboard/google expedition, this experience really inspired me to think of ways that I could push Illustration and design using development in technology such as Virtual Reality. Technology is developing so I feel that as a creative I should be prepared for what's next. We were also given our own google cardboard headsets each for free, so I now have a tool that I could start exploring VR if I wanted to.
It also relates to the whole idea of 'Travel' that I previously stated as a possible area for exploration in my FMP.
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