Juxtaposition: RMB City vs. Bananas on a Boat. Watch on Youtube Doubler.

What does it mean? This does not mean anything yet, it is a note in the form of a juxtaposition. But of course it has meaning to you when you watch it? Starting from the visual similarities, the difference between the videos is interesting. On the left side is a video from 2007 showing an artistic approach to a digital urbanity, in virtual reality, RMB City by Cao Fei (China Tracy). On the right side is a video collage from 2016 of drone footage of a burning yacht with added objects in augmented reality by Jason Hsu. In the light of events of 2016 the second one could for example be read as a commentary on contemporary spectatorship where people send smileys and likes that are then collaged with a facebook livestream of the battle of Mosul, on the gamefication of daily life and on simulation and hyperreality in the sense of Jean Baudrillard. And then we can start to compare it to the other video again. There is a decade between the technologies and phantasies of these two videos. The first one is “old”, but the artistic possibilities of the medium virtual reality, even of Second Life, see a revival.

The battle of Mosul on Facebook Live in 2016. The Facebook feature of inserting smileys into to lower part of a live stream meant here that smileys were floating on the image of the war scene.