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The pleasures – and perils – of hyper-reality
James Walsh on culture matters

 TWO months ago, London-based designer Keiichi Matsuda released a short film depicting an augmented reality future called Hyper-Reality.

Filmed in Colombia, it’s a lurid conceptual video in which the real and the virtual have fused, with garish computer imagery presented as an overlay to drab shops and streets.

From our first person perspective we see the protagonist, a 41-year-old woman, navigate endless distractions as she plays games, accrues points, feeds a virtual top-hatted dog and eventually levels up to Catholicism.

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