Title | THE UNFILTERED HISTORY TOUR |
Brand | VICE WORLD NEWS |
Product / Service | VICE WORLD NEWS |
Category | C03. Exhibitions / Installations |
Entrant | DENTSU WEBCHUTNEY Bengaluru, INDIA |
Idea Creation | DENTSU WEBCHUTNEY Bengaluru, INDIA |
Idea Creation 2 | DENTSU WEBCHUTNEY Mumbai, INDIA |
Idea Creation 3 | DENTSU WEBCHUTNEY Gurgaon, INDIA |
Media Placement | DENTSU WEBCHUTNEY Mumbai, INDIA |
PR | DENTSU WEBCHUTNEY Mumbai, INDIA |
Production | DENTSU WEBCHUTNEY Mumbai, INDIA |
Production 2 | PIXEL PARTY New Delhi, INDIA |
Production 3 | VICE MEDIA London, UNITED KINGDOM |
Name | Company | Position |
---|---|---|
Gautam Reghunath | Dentsu Creative | Head of Business |
Aditiya P.G. | Dentsu Creative | Head of Creative |
Gurbaksh Singh | Dentsu Creative | Innovation Lead |
Binaifer Dulani | Dentsu Creative | Creative Lead |
Karishma Changroth | Dentsu Creative | Project Lead |
Ashwin Palkar | Dentsu Creative | Creative Head - Art |
Kushal Lalvani | Dentsu Creative | Copy Lead |
Aabhaas Shreshtha | Dentsu Creative | Creative - Art |
Anjali Thomas | Dentsu Creative | Account Manager |
Geetika Sood | Dentsu Creative | Creative Producer |
Niranjan Raghu | Dentsu Creative | Video Lead |
Manish Joseph | Dentsu Creative | Motion Graphics Lead |
Ishtaarth Dalmia | Dentsu Creative | Strategist |
Ananya S Rao | Dentsu Creative | Strategist |
Meghna Yesudas | Dentsu Creative | Social Lead |
Shaleen Wadhwana | Consultant | Research Consultant |
Shreya Vivek Arora | Dentsu Creative | Senior Art Director |
Tanya Paul | Dentsu Creative | Senior Art Director |
Vignesh Praveen | Dentsu Creative | Animation and Video Production |
Manasi Sheth | Dentsu Creative | Art Director |
Rakesh Bairwa | Dentsu Creative | Lead Web Developer |
Rahul Sharma | Dentsu Creative | Web Developer |
Gerson Pearson | Dentsu Creative | Video and Mixed Reality Producer |
Priyanka Borah | Dentsu Creative | Business Lead |
Stuti Sudha | Dentsu Creative | Copywriter |
Amey Chodankar | Dentsu Creative | Creative - Art |
Karthik Nambiar | Dentsu Creative | Creative - Art |
Farishte Irani | Dentsu Creative | Microsite - Copy |
Vaishakh Kolaprath | Dentsu Creative | Art Director |
Ronak Chugh | Rooted Films LLP | Films |
Sameer Rahat | Consultant | Music Composer |
Jeremy Pinto | Vivi5 Studios | Motion Graphics |
Manas Sharma | Vivi5 Studios | Motion Graphics |
Mehul Mahicha | Vivi5 Studios | Motion Graphics |
Prashant Bhikadia | Consultant | . |
Ateesh Chattopadhyay | Consultant | . |
Emi Eleode | Consultant | . |
Shanel Moraes | Consultant | . |
Sachin Ghanekar | Consultant | . |
The Unfiltered History Tour uses Instagram Augmented Reality Filters to let visitors scan the British Museum’s disputed artefacts, teleporting them back to their homeland, as experts from these countries play tour guide in an immersive audio-visual experience. Worldwide, people enjoyed extended podcasts told by the same experts. Developed right under the Museum’s nose, the campaign was covered by VICE's competitors, establishing VICE as a thought-leader in postcolonialism, and built equity from its series, ‘Empires of Dirt’. The idea was to use the British Museum’s space and exhibit to talk about the one thing it had historically papered over - colonialism.
Situation The British Museum is the world’s largest receiver of stolen goods with over 8 million objects - that’s a lot of potentially looted artefacts. But for centuries, we’ve only heard the imperialist version of how they got there. An equitable environment can only be created when silenced voices express the intergenerational trauma caused by colonial loot. Brief To place VICE World News at the forefront of conversations around colonialism and challenge dominant cultures by opening up dialogue to countries around the world to create a balance in the way history has been told. Objectives 1. Give a platform to underrepresented minority voices to share their accounts of artefacts that belong to their country. 2. Re-ignite the ongoing conversation on repatriation & postcolonialism, with VICE championing marginalised voices. 3. Educate young people about the untold side of history using a tool as accessible as Instagram filters to tell unfiltered stories.
The Unfiltered History Tour is a guerrilla Tour of the British Museum carried out via Instagram filters where visitors can connect to the British Museum’s WiFi, scan disputed artefacts, and see them being teleported back in time to their home countries. Using Augmented Reality to showcase first-ever visual depictions of scenes of colonial crime, we created Filters that scanned 10 of the Museum’s disputed artefacts and narrated their true histories in the voices of expert natives. All accessed inside the British Museum, using the resources of the British Museum. Those who aren’t at the British Museum can also unfilter history from wherever they are in the world, with immersive audio-video experiences and extended podcasts detailing the stories of colonial crime, hosted on the Unfiltered History Tour website.
Through an exhaustive selection process in consultation with an art historian, disputed artefacts with an imperialist narrative were chosen, with equal representation across continents and cultures - Jamaica, Easter Island, Egypt, Greece, Nigeria, Ghana, Iraq, India, China and Australia. Authenticity was at the forefront of the project, in collaboration with native experts from 10 countries who presented a side of history never seen or read in textbooks or by the Museum. This approach went against the mainstream narrative around colonial artefacts pushed by major publications and the Museum itself. We went social-first and spoke to young people on platforms they were most likely to take notice of - Instagram, Tik Tok, Spotify, Apple Music among others. Visitors to the British Museum were invited to experience another side of history by taking the Unfiltered History Tour. And people across the globe could unfilter history through an immersive audio and video experience.
The Unfiltered History Tour was developed remotely over 18 months, with a local team in London gathering data on measurements and placements. During development, our biggest ally was ironically, the Museum’s layout on Google Earth. To account for changing lighting conditions in the Museum and ensure a seamless user experience, AR technicians employed LiDAR (Light Detection Ranging) data integration, developing a first-of-its-kind dynamic auto adapting Instagram Filter that blends satellite data with Augmented Reality. At any given point, only 1% of the British Museum's collection is on display. Through our extended podcast series, users could continue to discover the unfiltered history of artefacts not on display. The Instagram filters faced multiple rounds of rejection by the Spark AR team for being ‘shocking, sensational, excessively violent. However it was reviewed out of context, without the overlay of native representation. After nearly 20 design iterations, they were approved and deployed.
The campaign launched in December, 2021 and in its first month has seen Earned media worth $631K 32 million social impressions 40% rise in TikTok followers and 49% increase in total Instagram impressions 21,583 podcast downloads and 5,200 filter uses (in 30 days) Change in behaviour According to a 2014 survey, 59% of Britons were proud of the British Empire. In a poll conducted weeks after the Tour was launched, 59% of Britons said they believed the Parthenon Marbles (part of the Tour) belonged in Greece, a sharp turn in the opposite direction. The podcast series let us go a lot deeper with the project and give audiences something heavily educational, not found in British history textbooks. What some users had to say after taking the tour: “Clever and a brilliant way of teaching historical reality” “Confronts and challenges colonial origins.” “Hearing the past told by multiple perspectives gives depth.”