Visual artist Mat Collishaw is crowdfunding to support his new project: creating an experience that will take viewers back to the birth of photography, the medium that spawned all subsequent image-based technological innovations.

"The installation will place you inside the 1839 exhibition where you will see the artefacts and touch the cases that housed them. A fire will crackle in the fireplace and you will feel its heat as you approach. Various technical innovations from the period will be on display in the glass vitrines.

The Chartists were rioting in the city that year, demanding the right to vote and voicing opposition to the technological developments of the industrial revolution and the mechanisation of labour taking jobs from real people. Occasionally you will hear a disturbance and see a violent crowd gathered outside in the street, throwing missiles and shouting slogans. As our digital world encroaches on more and more jobs, these issues find a parallel in our world today.

There will be alternate levels of reality and unreality. This is a virtual reality of a virtual reality of reality."

See more about the project and the rewards on offer here.