Loukia-Alavanou-2023-140X148-English-for-web

sounds and fragments from the 1940’s film To New Horizon’s audio that consists of a narrator’s syrupy voice talking about "progress," "highways" and "new geographical frontiers." On a technical level, I was eager to experiment with switching from monoscopic to stereoscopic VR180 viewing as part of a narrative strategy. The male narrator’s voice employed supposedly to guide us, suddenly slips into hallucinations and is eventually taken over towards the end of the film, momentarily throwing the viewers off balance, while the visual part stealthily becomes stereoscopic; something that more viewers will sense but will not realize on a conscious level. … After all, I see the 40s futuristic film To New Horizons , on which my VR project is based and which was shot above dioramas or through a helicopter over rural America, as a predecessor of "google maps." Furthermore, underneath the visual and acoustic stimuli of my VR project, there is a preoccupation with the feminine presence in film and its established symbolisms in the contemporary language of visual and cinematic production: The "pilot" film’s male voice is taken over or "hijacked" by the hyperfeminine, nymphet-like female voice of Ginger Rogers as Alice from a highly unknown, post-war auditory version of Alice in Wonderland produced by Walt Disney.