VR technology allows users to immerse themselves in a virtual environment that can be designed to replicate real-world landscapes, such as those found in South Africa. This provides a unique opportunity for artists, performers, and sculptors to create immersive experiences that showcase the beauty of the landscape or draw attention to environmental issues related to waste materials.
WhoreDuh is an immersive VR prototype experience set in a landscape environment made entirely out of waste materials. Users are able to engage with various objects, and unveiled is a plastic crown – rising from the horizon, like a blood moon.
Limb is an interdisciplinary artist whose work indulges play and improvisation through the mediums of video, sculpture, performance and costume all in the realms of DIY. Married to memory, Limb explores the world of discarded objects and waste materials by weaving societies seemingly superfluous trinkets into reimagined worlds of reflection.
Waves lap the sand and bird calls are heard from the treetops, but upon closer inspection this landscape quickly becomes familiar. Each texture, plant, geological structure and almost tangible object is recognisable, crafted out of waste materials and found objects. Onion-dyed printed cloth becomes rockery, cigarette butts – a tree, cardboard mountain ranges, bubblewrap waves and reconstructed waste form a landscape of psychedelia. Polymorphic beasts sway gently and trees alike. A handwritten note lays beneath a hand-dyed felt mushroom, it says don’t touch… Above, floating shadow objects unlock audio pertaining to their uses and merge to form one bulbous creature that disappears over the horizon. Blood moon rises, and this new ominous world reveals a crown made from the very shadowy materials that disappeared into a cosmic exchange, out of sight. Your hands glow pink, both toxic and euphoric as you are able to play with the crown, made visible are the melted marbled HDPE jewels and LDPE braiding. Once detergent bottles and shopping bags, the crown is resurrected with a new sense of power. This prototype uses the real world’s trashscape to mirror the potential of waste, and perhaps users will bring urgent messages from a far away fantasy land – to this world, where it is needed. Emergency, the blood moon is rising upon our planet and is no longer out of sight.
Creative Direction – Tamzyn Botha
Art Direction – Francois Knoetze
Propsmaker – Tamzyn Botha & Tinyiko Makwakwa
Unity Developer – Kyle Marais
Sound Design and Original Score – Jumping Backslash