‘Condition One’ Bravely Brings Us To Libya’s Front Lines

Danfung Dennis, director of the 2011 Sundance documentary Hell And Back Again, is heading up immersive experience project Condition One, a mobile content technology startup which aims to reinvent war journalism by bringing viewers to the front lines of the Libyan conflict.

Condition One‘s first beta demo, which features immersive video shot this month by photojournalist Patrick Chauvel from the Libyan desert near Ras Lanouf, shows up close and personal encounters with the rebel forces.

“I mean I’m talking putting my life now on front line,” a rebel in plain clothes explained in an interview. “But I don’t care. Give me my freedom or give me my death. They are just asking to be free, to be human, to have dignity to live like any other people. Not under this fucking dictator.”

“It’s a very sad story,” Chauvel says. “These guys are students, they’re hairdressers, they’re bakers, bankers, philosophers, teachers. They are no military.” With Gaddafi loyalists targeting the media, it has become increasingly difficult for Chauvel to escape the conflict before it becomes a massacre. At the time, four New York Times journalists were missing.

From the website:

Demonstrations have given way to a bloody conflict. Battle lines sway back and forth as the Benghazi-centered ragtag rebels combat Tripoli’s mercenaries and loyalists. Pro-Gaddafi forces mount their first coordinated offensive, exposing the rebels as woefully untrained and unorganized. Defiance turns to anguish when casualties mount. Slivers of hope rest on defecting army generals and foreign intervention.

The project uses a Canon DSLR to capture the entire human field of view, providing a first person experience in which the viewer can move around the space like in a video game (see video above).