Skip to content Skip to footer

Tag: Seven grams

HomeAll PostsTag: Seven grams

SEVEN GRAMS review by TECHVANGART

In a recent article, Techvangart reviews the best movies and XR experiences from the Sundance Festival 2022. Here is what they write about our project Seven Grams :

“A former war correspondent and photojournalist, Karim Ben Khelifa has been experimenting with new ways of practicing journalism, using emerging media as a way to engage audiences. 

After the success of VR experience The Enemy, Karim Ben Khelifa teams up once again with Lucid Reality’s executive producer Chloé Jarry. This time, using AR, you can witness the human cost that goes into producing smartphones in five chapters – 3 AR and 2 video materials.

The AR phone is remarkably smashed, so you can see each component. And each component is carefully analyzed.

Users will find out why each component is important from 

(1) a technical point of view when they use the phone,

(2)what rare minerals contain and ways these minerals are obtained;

(3) And the human cost of it: abuse and human exploitation linked to mineral extraction in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It highlights how the perfect scheme work: fancy advanced phones for the world, and Congo remains without minerals, but with poverty.

Besides the technical and cold-analysis carried out, you will have in the end also personal stories highlighted.

A ineffaceable experience, all chapters are a balanced blend between cold-rigorous analysis specific to investigative journalism and emotional storytelling, highlighting the personal aspect of systematic abuse.

And knowing all these, interestingly enough, the director chose to present the whole story… on the sc(re)ene of the crime – directly on your mobile phone. As if while you are watching, it would ‘force’ you to admit… ‘even, right now, we are all part of it’.”

Source : https://techvangart.com/2022/02/03/techish-futuristic-films-sundance-2022

SEVEN GRAMS previewed at the BAYEUX CALVADOS-NORMANDY WAR CORRESPONDENT PRIZE

We are delighted to announce the preview of our new augmented reality project “SEVEN GRAMS” directed by Karim Ben Khelifa (The Enemy) at the Bayeux Calvados-Normandy War Correspondents Award, whose 28th edition will be held from October 4 to 10, 2021. An exhibition mixing several artifacts and a test area of the experience will be held at the Espace d’art actuel Le Radar and will last until October 31, 2021.

The Bayeux Prize rewards and pays tribute to reporters who exercise their profession in perilous conditions and allow us to access to free information. On this occasion and during a week, various events will be organized around the French and foreign media.

Discover from October 5th, the new exhibition SEVEN GRAMS at the Espace d’art actuel Le Radar at 24, rue des Cuisiniers in Bayeux. Open Tuesday to Sunday from 2:30 to 6:30 pm, Saturday from 2 to 7 pm. Exceptional openings, Friday, October 8 from 2:30 pm to 7 pm and Saturday, October 9 from 10 am to 12 am and from 1 pm to 5 pm (continuous day). Free entrance

Seven grams

VARIETY | Karim Ben Khelifa’s intervention at New Images Festival

From the 23rd to the 27th of October, the 3rd edition of the New Images Festival took place at the Forum des Images, in Paris, France. Dedicated to presenting innovative projects to both professionals and the public, the festival presents a variety of XR, VR, and AR experiences. Among them, Karim Ben Khelifa’s  AR experience “Seven Grams”.

This project is co-produced by Lucid Realities, France Télévision, POV and Think Film, the experience gives the used the opportunity to visualise the content of their own phone, and the humanitarian cost behind it. On Thursday, September 24th, director Karim Ben Khelifa presented a prototype of the experience, which takes the form of a phone application to the visitors of New Images Festival. 

He explained,  during the live-streamed case study “Seven Grams: Solution Journalism and Augmented Reality”, the concept behind his next AR project – once again with the help of executive producer Chloé Jarry of Lucid Reality. Journalist Marta Balaga, from Variety, writes : “ As mentioned also in the short trailer, shown to the audience gathered in the room as well as the one watching online, “Seven Grams” is a global journalistic project that tells the story of smartphones through a smartphone, using AR. With each mobile containing roughly seven grams of precious minerals, like gold, one country in particular has an abundance of them: The Democratic Republic of Congo. “But for many, this has been a curse rather than a blessing,” it was said in the video materials, as they are often extracted in horrendous conditions, violating basic human rights.” Karim Ben Khelifa explained that the idea for Seven Grams was born in 2014, while he was doing his previous VR experience, The Enemy.

“I was in a mine in eastern Congo, taking photos with my phone.
Not realizing they are digging out the very minerals that are enabling me to do it. [I want to show] why are we using these minerals,
why they are indispensable and how they make the device you have
in your hand so powerful”.

Karim Ben Khelifa
Director of Seven Grams

From augmented reality to the use of charcoal drawings, from the technological dissection to the story of Chance, a congolese miner, abducted when he was only 12 years old and going through immense horror, the article details the different artistic choices made by the director.

If you’d like to learn more about Karim Ben Khelifa’s intervention at the New Images Festival, click here.

Source : Variety

ChangeNOW | prototype version of “Seven Grams” presented at Grand Palais

The first universal exhibition dedicated to global crisis solutions took place at the Grand Palais. From the 30th of January to the 1st of February 2020, ChangeNOW, took place in the heart of Paris for a brand new edition. The event aims to bring together business, organisations and other actors of effective change, in hope of inniating positive impact in society. 

 With over 20 000 visitors, 250 speakers from over 100 countries, and over 1000 solutions presented, ChangeNOW hopes to both raise awareness among the public, and showcase solutions to answer major social and environmental issues of our century. 

For the occasion, the prototype version of Seven Grams, an augmented reality project directed by Karim Ben Khelifa, co-produced by Lucid Realities, France Télévisions and POV PBS,  will be exceptionally presented to the public on the France Télévisions stand. 

By using AR to explain complex political, economical and technical realities Seven grams offers, in a radically innovative way, to discover the link between our smartphones and the dramatic conditions in which Congolese minors live and work.

With this new project, innitiated by director of VR project THE ENEMY, Karim Ben Khelifa hopes to raise awareness of the dramatic consequences of the electronic devices’ production circuit and the mineral extraction industry in DRC.  

 

 

© Lucid Realities -2021