2.1: ZoomPhobia
This project has become compromise on compromise, leaving little of the original idea, and yet creating an eerie and phobic feeling that was the ultimate goal of this work.
Now that we see each other almost exclusively through the little squares of our webcams, a feeling of claustrophobia arose in me: the fear of being reduced to this tiny square and slowly becoming smaller and smaller until nothing is left of me.
Therefore my original idea was a work to let others feel the same way I feel. With the help of OpenFrameworks I created 1 live webcam feed and three pre-loaded video's that had the dimensions of being in a Zoom meeting. The person playing the program would see themselves in this fake zoom meeting and experience a form of spatial exclusion from the other three members of the meeting. They would physically close the corners of their screens off, as if to block the participant, move as far back in their respective square as was allowed and eventually they would even physically push the square of the participant into the corner. The participant would become smaller and smaller until nothing was left of them.
Unfortunately, even thought the video's were the smallest format possible and my graphics card is pretty high end, when running the program the video's would slow down immensely, to the point where you would only see a frame every 5 seconds or so.
Therefor I opted for a new approach and recorded three new video's in which the other three members of the meeting would not be so lively and interactive. They eventually got the qualities of videogame NPC's: doing what they are programmed to do but not quite reacting to what is actually happening around them. As if brain dead, they continue the meeting while the person in the live cam feed is slowly disappearing.
This is a video-recording of the final version: