Pleasure Points

© Alastair Philip Wiper - Image from the Pleasure Points photography project © Alastair Philip Wiper - Image from the Pleasure Points photography project © Alastair Philip Wiper - Lip options for the RealDoll sex dolls and sex robots View all images ↓
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The ups and downs and the insides outs of the adult pleasure product industry.

Pleasure Points is a journey under the covers of the past, present and future of California’s pleasure product industry. Pleasure Points is an exploration of sex robot workshops, family-run dildo factories and virtual reality porn that exposes the ways technology helps people choose to take control of their sex lives and their sexual identities.

“We don’t recommend oral sex. There are gears in there. I mean, you can mess things up; you can mess yourself up. She’s got the mouth, and everything moves, but we don’t recommend it. It’ll kind of ruin the whole thing.” RealDoll in San Marcos has released the first sex doll with a robotic head that can interact with its owner. Every doll is completely customisable, from hair, to lips, to nipples, to vagina (there are more than 10 types). “Robots and AI are the next big frontier,” says Matt McCullen, founder of Realdoll. "As much as people are paranoid and worried that robots are going to take over, I think that idea in and of itself is ridiculous. Why would they take over? Take over, and then? What do they do? Make us their slaves to do what? Give them all our money. Robots don't need money.” Matt believes it is inevitable that robots that look human will walk among us and that our fear of this comes from the negative portrayal of robots in science fiction.

In Hollywood, at the factory of Doc Johnson, 450 employees produce around 75,000 dildos, vibrators, masturbators, butt plugs and more every week. Chad Braverman, COO of Doc Johnson, says he sees a large part of the company's future in technology that allows people to connect devices and stimulate each other over the internet. "People think of sex toys a lot, and they think of masturbation ... I've always felt that our products are best not just for those purposes, but also for partners and couples, and people that want to play together ... And so, this is bringing that connection to people that might not be able to be together, but want to have that sexual experience, and want to feel that they're actually delivering that pleasure to the person, instead of that person just delivering it to themselves…"

Technology is also playing its part in the pornography world, and VR Bangers is a company that produces highly immersive virtual reality porn shot from a 180-degree point-of-view (POV) angle. Viewers wear a headset and can look around as though they are in the room as the star of the show. Another project the company is working on is called 'Time Capsule’. Couples can pay to be filmed having sex with the VR cameras from each of their POVs, and when they are synched together and played back through goggles, each partner experiences having sex with the other one at the moment they were filmed. “You can use this experience in 20 years and see yourselves young. So, you’re having sex as normal, but … when you are like 80 years old, you see yourself and your partner with a 20-year-old body,” explains Daniel Abramovich, CEO and founder. This service starts at $10,000.

As more people watch porn (there were 38 billion visits to Pornhub alone in 2022), use dildos and interact with sex robots, more people are gaining control of a part of their life that up til now has been dependent on a relationship with another human.

Pleasure Points should be printed and shown as framed large-format photographs.

© Alastair Philip Wiper - Image from the Pleasure Points photography project
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A robotic head at the RealDoll sex doll factory in San Marcos, California. "As soon as you make it move and look around and be able to have a conversation with it, suddenly it's hard to call it a sex doll, because it's now a robot." - Matt McCullen, founder of RelDoll

© Alastair Philip Wiper - Image from the Pleasure Points photography project
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The RealDoll workshop in San Marcos, California, where 20-30 fully customisable sex dolls are made by hand. Regular dolls average at $5-6,000, and a robotic head costs an extra $8,000.

© Alastair Philip Wiper - Lip options for the RealDoll sex dolls and sex robots
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Lip options for the RealDoll sex dolls and sex robots

© Alastair Philip Wiper - RealDoll mouth parts are fully removable for cleaning
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RealDoll mouth parts are fully removable for cleaning

© Alastair Philip Wiper - A robotic head at the RealDoll robot workshop in San Marcos, California.
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A robotic head at the RealDoll robot workshop in San Marcos, California.

© Alastair Philip Wiper - Image from the Pleasure Points photography project
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"The whole mouth comes out for cleaning, but the tongue actually has four sides. You can do a fat tongue down, fat tongue up, skinny tongue up, skinny tongue down. You know, like she's licking her lips or whatever. But they all come with the flexible teeth and tongue." A RealDoll on the production line.

© Alastair Philip Wiper - An employee with a freshly moulded Doc Johnson dildo, at the factory in Los Angeles.
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An employee with a freshly moulded Doc Johnson dildo, at the factory in Los Angeles.

© Alastair Philip Wiper - The factory floor at Doc Johnson in Los Angeles, where 450 employees produce 75,000 pleasure products per week
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The factory floor at Doc Johnson in Los Angeles, where 450 employees produce 75,000 pleasure products per week

© Alastair Philip Wiper - Image from the Pleasure Points photography project
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Anjani Hunaman, the Columbian artist that has sculpted the Doc Johnson sex toys for 20 years. "Most of those pieces over there, I have done most of them by hand out of my imagination."

© Alastair Philip Wiper - Moulds for rubber dildos on the factory floor of Doc Johnson, where 450 employees produce 75,000 sex toys per week.
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Moulds for rubber dildos on the factory floor of Doc Johnson, where 450 employees produce 75,000 sex toys per week.

© Alastair Philip Wiper - The factory floor at Doc Johnson in Los Angeles, where 450 employees produce 75,000 pleasure products per week
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The factory floor at Doc Johnson in Los Angeles, where 450 employees produce 75,000 pleasure products per week

© Alastair Philip Wiper - Pornstar Katie Morgan with her travelling suitcase of outfits, before a VR porn shoot for VR Bangers in Hollywood.
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Pornstar Katie Morgan with her travelling suitcase of outfits, before a VR porn shoot for VR Bangers in Hollywood.

© Alastair Philip Wiper - Image from the Pleasure Points photography project
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A specially modified VR camera used by VR Bangers. "In order to keep up you gotta always be innovative, so we change our camera rigs almost every three four months because the technology is getting better ... our customers are really tech savvy and they're quality freaks, you know, they want to have the best quality so now we have 6K ... Next step is probably going to be 8K, 10K at some point. We can shoot at 10K, but nobody has devices that will actually play 10K." Daniel Abamovich, CEO of VR Bangers

© Alastair Philip Wiper - Pornstar Katie Morgan posing for still shots before her VR shoot for VR Bangers.
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Pornstar Katie Morgan posing for still shots before her VR shoot for VR Bangers.

© Alastair Philip Wiper - Pornstar Katie Morgan teasing the VR camera.
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Pornstar Katie Morgan teasing the VR camera.

© Alastair Philip Wiper - Image from the Pleasure Points photography project
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"It's definitely takes a certain kind of guy that can be able to keep that party going without the eye contact ... it is definitely more acting than regular porn, because you don't get that, I don't want to say romantic connection, but you don't even get that, right? Like that spark that you can't look at the person. They're not there. They're just a camera." John Strong and Katie Morgan performing in "Cable Guy" by VR Bangers

© Alastair Philip Wiper - 180 degree video from two cameras is previewed on a laptop on set.
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180 degree video from two cameras is previewed on a laptop on set.