LO 05: Man Mask

LO 5

Man Mask

By Rachel Rossin

“Man Mask” is a VR piece by Rachel Rossin in which the viewer inhabits (literally is placed inside) a call of duty avatar. The piece takes the viewer on “a guided meditation through landscapes taken from the game Call of Duty: Black Ops, drained of violence and transformed into an ethereal dream world”. I think that the idea of taking assets and environments from a video game and recontextualizing them for a completely different effect is pretty interesting. It allows for commentary on the particular piece of media, but also the freedom to depart from it. This piece was created in part as a reaction to the artist’s own experience playing first person shooters and taking on a male avatar online in search for neutrality. I also think it is interesting how it places the viewer visibly inside the avatar, so you are more immersed in the character than in a third person view, but not really looking through the character’s eyes, rather from behind them.

http://rossin.co/