November 18, 2015
The CHALE WOTE Street Art Festival, organized by ACCRA [dot] ALT, is an alternative platform that brings art, music, dance, and performance to the streets of Accra. The festival targets exchanges between artists and patrons by creating and appreciating art together. To bring Virtual Reality (VR) technology to the thousands that participate in the Festival, Ashesi alumni Jonathan Dotse ’15 and Kabiru Seidu ’14 designed a VR presentation that allows the wearer to travel through several streets in Accra.
“We started the PANDORA project to demonstrate the capabilities of current VR technology and raise critical questions about its future implications for African societies,” Kabiru and Jonathan said. “The ultimate goal of the exhibition was to open up discourse about how African societies can safely navigate the complex and uncharted terrain of VR, considering how rapidly this technology has been developing in recent years.”
Since 2011, CHALE WOTE has included street painting, graffiti murals, photography, theater, spoken word, interactive art installations, live street performances, extreme sports, film shows, a fashion parade, a music block party, recyclable design workshops and more. This year’s theme, African Electronics, was a great inspiration for Kabiru and Jonathan.
On the inspiration for naming their project, Kabiru and Jonathan explain that “the 360-degree video presentation was meant to portray VR as a Pandora’s Box, whose opening will irrevocably transform our lives, for better or worse, in the same way, that computers and mobile phones have brought waves of social change that were never anticipated.”