Immersion comes in so many forms with so many different styles that there are many ways to make media immersive whether that is through VR, AR or other means. So, when researching stories that can be portrayed immersively it is fascinating to see how people in the industry go about fully immersing their audience, especially through storytelling.
By experiencing and learning from a range of observational field trip talks about different variations of immersive experiences allowed me to see the range of different ways that there can be immersion in media, even in places I didn't even realise immersiveness could be. These different companies and individuals found ways to present immersiveness in a way I typically would not have thought to explore or look into myself, which allowed me to see the ways I would incorporate these different ways of creating interactivity and what elements of these other projects I would personally not want to approach.
Going into these events I did not know what I would take away from each talk or guest lecturers. However, seeing such a vast amount of ways to portray a story that people are passionate about was awe inspiring whether it be through emotion, theatre, science or otherwise.
As I had the opportunity of observing a variety of speeches and events, here are my discoveries, views, and understanding of these:
London Immersive Experience
The Gunpowder Plot Immersive Experience
Synapsis: An immersive dramatised performance where they combine real life interaction performances as well as VR. This piece finds the audience venturing and travelling back in time to the dark and perilous alleys of London in 1605, where a plot is afoot. During the era of Guy Fawkes and his fellow Catholic conspirators where they planned the attempt to blow up Parliament and assassinate James I of England.
The audience finds themselves in a setting where they are spying for the Crown, sympathising with oppressed rebels, smuggling gunpowder, and escaping the Tower of London before their head is spiked. The audience goes through the notions of being completely involved in the experience figuring out who are the traitors, and who they can trust? Even though this is a relatively short experience only around about the length of a film, around 1 hour 40 minutes, it is remarkable to see the makings of this immersive performance brought to life by live actors, million-dollar room sets, and three striking virtual reality scenarios.
Further Looks Into Their Concepts and Research
It would seem that within this performative piece they combined the concepts of storytelling through VR and in person to fully involve the audience in a high quality performance with actors, staging and environment. This aspect of storytelling fascinated me due to how they managed to pull off the incredibly hard task of keeping the audience fully immersed whilst switching between VR and reality and invested in the plot of the story.
The story elements of this is really captivating as they took one of the most well known stories in English history, so they had to come up with a way to make the story immersive with elements that would surprise the audience. They created plots and aspects that would have been overlooked in the normal tale shown in history, so therefore they made the plot more engrossing using the aspects of Guy Fawkes actual plot elements of the spying on the governments and making it so the audience can see multiple perspectives within the stories. These twists of the narrative that others would not normally explore as a way to draw in and immerse the audience is the part of this project that really drew me in and want to explore how to take an immersive story and twist in such a way that the audience would not expect.
Learning this way of storytelling allowed me to see the benefits of immersive theatre and how this one way of involving an audience can fully immerse a participant into the story environment and make them a part of the story through real life environmental storytelling as well as incorporated technology. Seeing this concept of theatre immersion allowed me to understand that there are a vast amount of options that could go into this way of storytelling and could create a range of dramatic but interactive pieces. However, there are some limitations towards this, the main few being time, money and performers, as this type of project would end up being costly and would require skilled performers to fully pull off the settings to form the illusion of the story.
To conclude from learning about this company and this talk in general I gained a better understanding of what immersive theatre is capable of. The performative side can be a really effective method of creating immersion and interacting with an audience. Even though it would be a fascinating concept to try and create with my own team as well as my own story within the future, as of right now I do believe it is not a concept I personally would want to invest my time in trying to create by myself. However, even though it would not be my stylised choice of immersion, my impression of it is that it could be a useful, effective tool for engaging with an audience if it is done correctly and I could definitely learn some of the elements of storytelling from this technique and storytelling ideation.
Nueroasethetics
Synapsis: Kinda Studios incorporates laboratory neuroscience studies into creative projects to make art, culture, and technology work harder for people's well-being.This studios focus on emotions such as Awe and how they can contribute to how one engages with media and the world in general. Along with this they use these studies of the brain to find ways to create new immersive art and media.
Further Looks Into Their Concepts and Research
The concept of using neuroscience as a way to form art and media is such a fascinating idea, not only are they including how emotions come into play but a whole new way of using emotions and the complexities of our brains to form a new way of presenting different mediums.
Now even though it is advanced science, using methods that involves elements that are to do with the brain and how we process everything is a fascinating way of creating immersion, however the one downside to this is that I am not a scientist so the main way of creating these elements would be drawing out the emotions from the audience instead of implementing science that I have not researched or studied.
Although I have not studied the science behind art formed with neuroscience, the idea of using it to show fractals and biological motion in particular to get the desired scientific outcome (Kinda Studios, Landau, R. and Lewis, K.T, n.d) but using it as a way to create motion art or even projection map it onto environments is an incredible and intelligent way to create immersive aspects.
To sum up bringing neuroscience into make an immersive atmosphere or designs is a unique way of immersion however the technology and methods are not aspects that I would often think of going too, although it would be fascinating to form art that I would want test out but it would not be a thing I would explore to in depth outside of the emotions elements even though the concept is inventive.
Immersive storytelling + the power to generate advocacy through empathy
Synapsis: This talk was an in-depth discussion on empathy and advertising, along with other aspects of immersion that could be sold as empathic. They were trying to show the power in which empathy could have within the content of different media.
Further Looks Into Their Concepts and Research
Even though the concept of this was innovative and there could be a lot done with it to connect to the audience using empathy and connecting through emotions as a form of immersion, despite this I did not research much into these concepts. The individual presenting the project did not personally draw my attention much at the time. However, I am sure that there were aspects of the talk that were unique, I did not follow the ideas as well as I should.
However, the idea of using the power of empathy to connect and engage with the target audiences is something that I would take forward with me. Emotions can be a powerful tool to help involve an audience and get them immersed into the media product that is being produced.
Ghost Escape Rooms:
Synapsis: The Ghost Escape Room (by the Room Labs) idea was an interactive audience driven talk explaining how escape rooms can immerse the player into a story that they must escape. The idea of using an escape room but twisting it with a story. They used environmental settings and created a range of environments in small spaces, having a team even recreate hallways when players enter a lift and make the place look haunted or completely adjust the environment to make the engagement level even higher.
Further Looks Into Their Concepts and Research
The concept of transforming a space to form an immersive space whether by it being an escape room or otherwise to tell a story is a really interesting idea. This company creates this through an escape room where they create the illusion of ghosts and hauntings around a player within the escape room.
Through this concept it would be fascinating to attempt to gain a space and create a twisted tale using only the environments and the audience. Even though there are limitations to this idea I still find the concept would be worth exploring, although it would be better to use these ideas with a team other than attempting to create it individually.
These ways of engaging the audience is something to strive to accomplish when it comes to immersive media and making a way to interact with the audience. There is such a vast range of ways to tell stories and there are so many escape room stories that could be done with different environments.
So, to conclude, it would be interesting to explore the idea of using a real world environment to form a story, maybe using a team to form interactive elements within a particular setting, using performers or so on to add to a real world story. However, as an individual project I would want to explore the concept of using an audience's emotion.
Guest Lecturer
Tape Letters - WAJID YASEEN
Synopsis
Tape Letters is about a range of tapes that were sent between a range of different families and spouses. This project focuses on the practice of recording and sending messages on cassette tape as a form of communication among Pakistanis who migrated and those who established themselves in the UK between 1960 and 1980.
‘Cassette tapes were an inexpensive and easy way to access and share music when I was growing up in Manchester in the 1970s, and the reaction by the music industry to home recordings on blank tapes made the illicit act of recording music off the radio or from records all the more exciting’ (Yaseen, 2023).
They tell some of the heartbreaking and heartwarming tales (translated) of people communicating with one another. It is a very human heart aching digital atmosphere that allows people to interact and listen to each of these people’s histories and conversations.
Further Looks Into Their Concepts and Research
The idea of using people's history and conversations to engage with an audience, to demonstrate people's love, grief, pain and normalities is such a unique way of portraying a story that would connect with others. By using very real and very human stories the audience could be immersed through empathy and sympathy, even though this is not a game or technically done it still tells a powerful story that connects the audience with a class aspect of everyday life using the one thing that most people have in common which is: communication.
This would be a fascinating concept to apply to other storytelling methods and maybe add another layer to other genres such as fiction, where you can add elements of nonfiction using other people's tales and interactions to engage and gain emotion out of the audience. By gaining knowledge and listening to other people’s stories and implementing them into our own stories could be truly an inspiring part of storytelling that could be so different to other stories.
Conclusion
To conclude these different concepts and designed versions of immersion has allowed me to see and understand such a vast range of how to engage or interact with an audience. A lot of these examples used real work as their major way of immersing their consumer, which is a fascinating way to add interactivity or form a story; however, it would be a challenging idea to try and accomplish by myself. Even though these had very captivating aspects or tales to each project I personally would not use a lot of these methods to create interactivity or immersion unless I had time, funding or a team in order to accomplish a high quality performative piece that could pull of similar ideas of powerful stories to draw in an audience.
References
Aston, J. and Odorico, S. (2021). Polyphonic Documentary. [online] Polyphonic Documentary. Available at: https://polyphonicdocumentary.com/ [Accessed 4 Dec. 2023].
Immersive Experience Network. (2023). Immersive Experience Network. [online] Available at: https://immersiveexperience.network/ [Accessed 1 Dec. 2023].
Kinda Studios, Landau, R. and Lewis, K.T. (n.d.). Kinda Studios | Neuroscience & Art - London, UK. [online] Kinda Studios. Available at: https://www.kindastudios.com/ [Accessed 1 Dec. 2023].
Layered Reality and Historic Royal Palaces (2021). About. [online] The Gunpowder Plot. Available at: https://gunpowderimmersive.com/about [Accessed 1 Dec. 2023].
Mobus Arts (2010). Modus Arts | Projects. [online] www.modusarts.org. Available at: https://www.modusarts.org/ [Accessed 5 Dec. 2023].
Modus Arts (2023). Tape Letters. [online] Tape Letters. Available at: https://tapeletters.com/ [Accessed 4 Dec. 2023].
THE ROOM Laboratories (2020). THE ROOM LABORATORIES. [online] THE ROOM LABORATORIES. Available at: https://www.theroomlabs.com/ [Accessed 11 Dec. 2023].
University College Cork (2022). Dr Stefano Odorico - ‘Multiperspectival Thinking: Polyphonic Documentary as a Method for Co-creation’. Film & Screen Media Research Seminar Series, Mon 10 Oct, 4.00 p.m. [online] University College Cork. Available at: https://www.ucc.ie/en/fmt/film/news/dr-stefano-odorico---multiperspectival-thinking-polyphonic-documentary-as-a-method-for-co-creation-film--screen-media-research-seminar-series-mon-10-oct-400-pm.html [Accessed 5 Dec. 2023].
Yaseen, W. (2023). Tape Letters | Wajid Yaseen. [online] www.wajidyaseen.com. Available at: https://www.wajidyaseen.com/tape-letters/ [Accessed 4 Dec. 2023].
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