Hyper-Reality by Keiichi Matsuda
Hyper-Reality is a concept film by Keiichi Matsuda, as part of an ongoing research-by-design project dealing with technology and the future. It is a future vision but more of a cautionary one. It shows an almost dystopian outcome where the world has potentially gone too far with virtual reality.
I really love the way in which he's presented this idea. The film does a great job of visualising an over-cluttered virtual reality, through it you're able to experience the sensory overload, and the overwhelming sensation of this undesirable future, mostly because it's shot from a first-person point of view. The audio is also excellent in supporting this.
The film is very clever and tackles numerous virtual reality scenarios and UI challenges. There are designs for video conferencing with real-time translations, wayfinding UI, notifications, Augmented Reality traffic warnings along the roads, but also spam and annoying popups. It is a literal depiction of real life intertwined with the internet, and it's not a pretty one, but one that's gone off the rails.
There are so many beautiful details and ideas in this film like the shopping cart price display for your actual physical shopping cart and the frosted glass effect, where the physical environment gets blurred to allow for legibility of the UI. The final interaction of drawing the cross to join Catholicism is brilliant too, the UX/UI is perfect for that, what a great touch!
What an interesting and clever project. Make sure you check it out!
