Last week, I broke Björk’s heart.
At least, I felt like I had. It was hard to ignore the rising feeling of incredible guilt and shame in my gut as three Björks cooed ‘show me emotional respect! I have emotional needs!’ into my ears from every direction.
It was the 360° virtual reality music video for her song Stonemilker, from REWIND and VRSE.WORKS.
Emotionally harrowing as her beachside interrogation was, I came out of REWIND’s VR experience grinning. I’d felt personally touched by a music video in a way that TV, movies and video games – no media, in fact - haven’t managed since I was young.
It wasn’t my first fling with virtual reality, but it was definitely the most immersive and hard-hitting I’ve come across yet. Looking around the real-life Icelandic beach I almost expected to get some sea spray in my face. And, I’m ashamed to admit that at one point I outstretched my hand in an attempt to touch Bjork’s (very nice) teeth.
VR and AR have had a - let’s face it - somewhat naff history, but this year marks a new frontier for this revitalised tech. With the commercial release of the Oculus Rift around the corner, and new headsets like Valve and HTC’s Vive about to appear in just a few months, the expanded scope of VR is becoming very obviously not just about gaming – with applications in marketing, architectural visualisation and even in military training, it’s exciting to imagine just how much things are going to change in the coming years.
REWIND will be at our Pool Party London this September, and we're dead excited to see them showing off some of the incredible content (like this!) that they’ve created for various virtual reality platforms.