"Styles & Customs of the 2020's" - Hillman Photography Initiative @ Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh

Styles and Customs of the 2020s is a project of LIGHTIME, a year of programming from CMOA’s Hillman Photography Initiative. At its essence—and since its beginnings—photography measures light and time. The four artist projects unfolding in 2017 expand upon and perhaps explode this notion.

What role does photography play in the virtual realm?

In this newly commissioned virtual reality (VR) experience, New York–based artist collectives DIS and Scatter present a digital dystopia inflected by rapid climate change, social unrest, and shifting global economics. When you don the VR headset, you will be transported to an ancient cave, animated by the flickering light of an age-old fire. The cave begins to dissolve, revealing one of four futuristic scenes.

Over the course of three minutes, you are transported forward in time as the light from the cave collides with that from the futuristic imagery before you. These scenes are created through computational photography technology, which combines cutting-edge research in camera technology, computer vision, and graphics. The result, much like Carnegie Museum of Art’s Hall of Architecture, is a pastiche of styles and images that unites disparate elements in new and unexpected ways and asks how a collision of light from the past and present can illuminate our present moment.