My VIEW/MEIN BLICK

VR-INSTALLATION, 2018

Photo: Bernhard Strauss

Installation view at Museum für Neue Kunst, Freiburg, 2018

The immersive Virtual Reality installation “My View/Mein Blick” by artist Patrick Alan Banfield forces up the viewers visual habits and perception of their digital dominated day-to-day life.

My View/Mein Blick, 2017/2018
VR installation
10:07 min, 360-degree video, ambisonics audio
Office chair, Gaming PC, Oculus Rift VR headset, punchbag stand
Dimensions variable

Courtesy: Patrick Alan Banfield

Won the VISIO Young Talent Acquisition Prize in 2019

Collected by Seven Gravity Collection


Cinematography: Nicolas C. Geissler

Voice-Over: Kendra Hoffman

Sound design: Sascha Blank

Photo: Max Eicke
Photo: Jens Gerber

With the virtual reality installation ‘My view‘ the artist invites one spectator at a time to an immersion in his video archive thanks to a VR Oculus Rift headset. A mash-up of images and sounds is alternatively projected on five virtual screens: from protests under the Trump Tower in New York to intimate and private films of a girlfriend to drone footage of the old mining architecture of the Ruhr. The impossibility of escaping the images and the haunting ambisonics soundtrack enhance the immersive experience that at times becomes alienating. The spectator‘s point of view doesn’t however remain private, as the rest of the visitors can follow his gaze in real time on a monitor. The work is the surprising result of a period of crisis for the artist. A digital stream of consciousness that well with reflects the bombardment of images and video content to which we are exposed every day.

Text by Leonardo Bigazzi

One’s own view is probably the most intimate thing – something one cannot share with anyone else. The virtual reality installation ‘My view‘ by video artist Patrick Alan Banfield tries exactly to achieve this through the use of an Oculus Rift VR headset. What was once was conceived to be a multi-channel video installation is now a collage made out of many clips and footage from the artist‘s archive, completed by intense and horrifying sounds in the form of ambisonics spatial sound. Resembling a classic video installation in the dark the viewers sees virtual screens around him or her. One is able to turn around but cannot avoid the arranged virtual screens within the VR headset and is exposed to the concentrated version of a digital stream of images. In fast cuts alternating images of violence, protests, harmonic and disturbing shots but also historical and political situations and moments. There are protests in front of the Trump tower in New York City from November 8, in response to Donald Trump‘s electoral victory. Escaping from the flood of images is impossible considering the 360 degreeinstallation, so the viewer feels to be taken prisoner in this immersive rotunda. While the viewer seems to be isolated from the outer world, outsiders are able to follow his personal view which makes him or her involuntarily an object of observation.

Text by Elena Frickmann

The intensity of the work we have chosen is combined with an aesthetic urgency that technology confirms. Our gaze of the world is probably the most intimate thing, something that cannot be shared with anyone. Hence the challenge of using the medium to open a window on the intimate, on that private gaze that no one besides us can experience.

Text by Seven Gravity Collection

The VR installation “My view” invites each viewer to immerse themselves in a haunting vision of the future. A mix of images and sounds are projected alternately onto five virtual screens, forcing the viewer to constantly turn around in an office chair. The impossibility of escaping the images and the haunting Ambisonics soundtrack add to the immersive, at times alienating experience. There is a narrator in the film who speaks directly to the viewer with commands and instructions.

The narrator is a ghost and will haunt us. In everyday life we hear voices, we see things like suddenly appearing virtual places, beings and situations that force us to interact with them. We cannot avoid them – unless we become a better, more moral and ethical person. Through the use of AR, hallucinations from drugs or direct manipulation of our brainwaves, we will no longer be able to distinguish between reality and ghostly interaction. This will change the way we interact with and perceive the world. These interactions come from transhuman beings, the successors of humanity, who live in a virtual way, that is, independent of bodies. They have a mission for humanity: to haunt us in order to make us better subjects. Our current political dilemmas and problems are nothing compared to being haunted and harassed by moral poltergeists run by virtual humans.

Everyday scenes in Europe and the US are transformed into uncanny, poetically political scenes to convey the voices of transhumans and images of our troubled world by appealing to the viewer’s subconscious. The viewer’s point of view with the Oculus is not private, however, as other visitors can follow his gaze in real time on a monitor – although they cannot hear the mind’s commands.

Text by Patrick Alan Banfield

360-degree stills of My View
Photo: Jens Gerber
Installation view at Kunsthaus Wiesbaden, 2018
Photo: Jens Gerber
Installation view at Kunsthaus Wiesbaden, 2018
Photo: Federica Di Giovanni
Installation view at Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, 2019
Photo: Max Eicke
Installation view at galerie weisser elefant, Berlin, 2023
Excerpt of My View, 2017/2018
Exhibitions

Palazzo Strozzi

PALAZZO STROZZI Florence, Italy “VISIO – Moving Images After Post-Internet”,

Exhibitions

Kunsthaus Wiesbaden

KUNSTHAUS WIESBADEN Wiesbaden, Germany “The Tide is High”, 03.12.2022 –