LIFE IN THE AGE
OF SYNTHETIC REALITIES
22 September 2019

I found a rather long and interesting Medium post by Andy Polaine called: Design in the age of synthetic realities. It is long, 34 minutes, but you can stroll and look at a lot of videos. Obviously this post is a preparation or rather documentation of a conference talk Andy gave here and there with minor variations. Andy works for Fjord and they are obviously part of Accenture. And they consult, do a yearly trend report. And besides silence is gold (who would have thought?!) you can find synthetic realities. That sounds interesting, somewhat new, i had not heard this term before, even though it has been around for quite some time. Sure it has. As always. And it is here and there before the next bright shiny term comes along for consultants to shine.

So for all you brand ambassadors out there: Here's what's next concerning to your trendscouts –  Brand owners will need to consider what role a brand has, can have, or should have, in a world in which we question the authenticity of everything.

Nothing is real. Strawberry fields forever

If it will become impossible for humans to tell the difference between natural and synthetic reality – then where do we draw the line between what is and what is not? 

I had to think about playing Superhot VR on the Oculus Quest the other day. I was kneeling on the floor, moving in slow-motion trying to hide, trying to throw a virtual ashtray and the situation felt real even so it was obviously not. Of course i was inside a selfmade virtual grid, game designers would call it a magic circle, where we agree on things to happen. 

Playing a running game like Zombies, Run! is immersive as hell, even so we are quite sure that there are no real Zombies behind us. But who knows. The line between real and not so very real might bend and blur. But we always talk about a real reality as if that was something already agreed on. We all can hopefully agree that we will get killed when jumping in front of a car made of steal and we might not if this car is only a projection. But as long as these information are not burnt onto our lenses or brains directly we can take of a HMD, glasses or we can close a book, laptop or whatever and continue our struggle in the real that is perceived quite differently by every human being

Besides the Oculus i tried to get immersed twice in the last days. I finally went to Berlin's Planetarium and made sure to check out the very final day of The New Infinity 2019.

The Planterium was okay, but it somewhat reminded me of Umberto Eco talking about old amusements that were removed because they no longer were able to do the trick in Hyperreality. I did enjoy the 16 minutes of Robert Lippok & Lucas Gutierrez Non-face. Not sure though if more storytelling would have made the experience stronger. I guess so. And yet again: Where is the multisensory approach. Where is a visual quality that rather hurts the eye. And when does the screen finally open up, shoot back or turn the entire universe around?