Imagine the possibility of choosing any moment from your past and reliving it through a virtual reality environment. A fabulous idea for some, chilling and disturbing for others. Inventor Lucas Rizzotto certainly belongs to the first group, and after overcoming multiple technical challenges, he created a "personal time machine" that contains a good part of his memories recorded throughout 2019. In other words... he spent a year with a camera on his face.
The Lifelogging Concept
The concept of lifelogging is nothing new. In fact, we have seen many mini-cameras and other dedicated products in the past, but traditional smartphones and the current dynamics of social media eventually absorbed their usefulness. However, all those resources aim at small moments, snacks, snippets. What happens when the plan is to document a whole year, day after day, and turn that content into a kind of "personal time machine"?
The Project
Inventor Lucas Rizzotto decided to find out, and beyond the 28-minute mini-documentary with generous doses of comedy, the truth is that this is not a simple project. The decision to wear a camera for a year is already huge, but add to that the fragility of the cameras, the impressive amount of space he needed to store his memories, and a difficulty that almost killed his idea: the apparent loss of metadata during the export process.
https://old.neoteo.com/madre-se-reune-con-su-hija-muerta-gracias-a-la-realidad-virtual/The Cameras
The cameras in question were Snapchat Spectacles, and I say 'were' because five ended up destroyed. Also, they can only record one minute at a time, they heat up a lot, and exporting videos is more complicated than it should be. As for the metadata issue, a simple exchange with Spectacles support confirmed that they were not lost, just 'invisible' to Windows. With that new information, he was finally able to create the video index and integrate it into his fabulous virtual environment, with a panel inspired by Back to the Future, reactors, retro decorations, and a playback "portal" inspired by the game Portal.
The Result
The result is excellent, and without a doubt, one of the best virtual reality projects so far. Of course, we have seen similar things in cinema Ready Player One, and Black Mirror had a particularly negative take on documenting the past in great detail, but after so much effort, Lucas ends his entry maintaining a much more optimistic tone. What do you think? Do we need something like this, or do you think it would drive us crazy in the end?
Lucas Rizzotto on Instagram: Click here
