VR-RV
Synopsis
Nicholas de Pencier
Edward Burtynsky
Jennifer Baichwal
A dynamic marriage of cinematic art and cutting edge technology, Anthropocene Interactive combines documentary storytelling with responsive gigapixel essays, 360 film and 3D modelling to fully immerse you in these photographic worlds, revealing what they signify to both the history and the future of human civilization, and its effect on the planet.
Journey to some of the most imposing and remote locations in the world, and experience a sense of scale that is beyond the scope of conventional screens.
Anthropocene: Carrara
Marble from Carrara has been in demand since the time of Ancient Rome. Used to build everything from bathroom countertops to Michelangelo’s David, our appetite for this highly prized stone has carved out whole sections of the Apuan Alps. In this experience, follow blocks of marble as they are hewn from pristine peaks in northern Italy and travel down the mountainside to artisans’ studios and out into the global export economy.
Anthropocene: Dandora
The Dandora Landfill is the largest of its kind in Kenya. It receives industrial, agricultural, commercial and medical waste, amounting to about 2,000 tonnes per day. It is estimated that more than a million people live in the vicinity of the landfill. Residents work informally sorting scrap by hand and selling it to recycling plants on site. The plastic hills and canyons of Dandora represent not only an entirely human landscape but also an emerging microeconomy. Prolific and easy to obtain, waste plastic has become a resource on its own, to be mined and sold as source material. But so much of it cannot be re-used and will be left to congeal in landfills, spilling into our waterways and oceans, eventually forming a significant sediment layer in the strata of the planet, and marking the Anthropocene in geological time.
Anthropocene: Ivory Burn
On April 31, 2016, the largest ivory burn in history took place in Nairobi National Park. Eleven pyres comprised of 105 tonnes of confiscated elephant tusks and 1.35 tonnes of rhinoceros horn were set on fire as a clarion call to halt all trade in ivory. The street value of the pyres was estimated between 105 and 150 million dollars — representing between 6,000 and 7,000 elephants. The Anthropocene Project team was there to capture this deeply symbolic and visceral message to the poaching and illegal trade syndicates, and to bear witness to the loss of animal life and the diversity it embodied.