The video opens by immediately engrossing the viewer in an overwhelmingly bright, flashy user interface packed with gameplay and various notifications. We are introduced to our protagonist, 42 year old Juliana Restrepo, whose heavy sighs and barren online profile imply some kind of inner turmoil or discontentment. The video takes place in Medellin, the second largest city in Columbia.
Immediately, the juxtaposition of the "inspiration guru's" robotic voice and the role "he" fulfills is jarring. The guru assigns jobs, assuring Juliana to "trust the app, it always chooses the right jobs for you!" But his advice obviously does not inspire Juliana, who is understandably upset that despite her education she is now a professional grocery shopper.
The video leaves a lot of questions unanswered about our first person protagonist's history. We can intuit that she is of somewhat low social class, and that she is dissatisfied with her life. But how did she arrive in her current situation? And is the cause of her inner emptiness the digital world or the daily grind of life in general? Juliana's thoughts of "resetting identity" make these questions even more ambiguous. On the one hand, the viewer can see how closely her identity has been tied to online systems, as her attempt is immediately doused by a fear of losing her "loyalty points." However, one wonders whether the gamification system itself is the problem, as it does not explain how Juliana arrived at the decision to "reset". All these questions presents a distinctly human problem underneath the sea of technological stimulation in front of us.
The second scene takes place in the store as Juliana does shopping for her client. She adopts a virtual dog that promises to reward her with even more loyalty points, and things seem to be proceeding smoothly until her system is hacked. As graphical glitches abound, Juliana incessantly questions the support staff as to whether her points are safe. As the staff member resets her system at the 4:00 mark, we catch a brief glimpse as to what the world looks like without the digital overlay. This sequence reinforces the ideas the video opened with, and introduces digital conflicts such as hacking and deeper impersonality as well (the customer service staff misidentifies Juliana the first time.)
The final scene takes place on the street as Juliana is attempting to verify her identity for the device reset. What occurs in the following scene is not entirely clear, but it appears that the hacker reveals her identity as she stabs Juliana in the hand, fulfilling the bio sample, resetting her identity, and deleting all her points. The video concludes as a distressed Juliana seems to place her faith in the gaudy digital interface of the catholic church.
Overall, "Hyper-Reality" presents the opposite view to Jane McGonigal's book: Reality is Broken. Gamification and other digital productivity boosters are often perceived as interesting at worst. But producer Matsuda envisions for us the dangers of relying on impersonal systems to dictate our lives, expanding the scope of his video from gamification to other current mobile trends. Despite our attempts to quantify human motivation and reward however, the blood that flows from Juliana's hand at the end of the video is a visceral reminder that we are still human beings in the end. Digital systems do not speak to human fallibility and unpredictability, nor can they create a deep sense of purpose despite the inspiration guru's optimistic words.
"Hyper-Reality" is an excellent and thought provoking work of art, I highly recommend giving it a watch.
