IC w6 LAB

Once a month there are talks from the Union For Dutch designers (BNO). This time it's about virtual reality and there are 5 speakers.

VR is a way of storytelling, that's how I quickly learn.

The first 2 speakers Nienke Huitinga and Lisa Weeda have created an experience around the crash of the MH17; 'Rozsypne'. A Dutch plane that has been hit by a parcel above the okraine where a war has been going on for 97 days at that time. Lisa is from the Okraine and she gets strange questions at parties. That is why she wants to highlight the other side of the story.

The makers have discovered that telling stories in combination with interactivity does not work at the same time. For this project they initially searched for press photos. What they say about that: They are terrible but often super beautiful.

The trailer:

They want to show daily life in their VR experience. The tanks and an elderly lady who lives there and see the people around her die in the war. To make it as real as possible, they travel to the Ukraine to photograph as many authentic houses and their baal contents as possible and also to talk to people. To be able to communicate with each other, they have built a cardboard model; this means that they all know for sure that they have the same experience of space and are talking about the same thing. It is interesting to see how the photos are processed in the eVR space. The things are really recognizable from the photos.

The second speaker is Yvonne van Ulden.

Yvonne van Ulden made the Fight AR Performance together with Andre Bergs, an immersive theater experience with animated augmented reality about the first female MMA champion ever: the Dutch Marloes Coenen. .

First of all, they organize a workshop for 8 talents that they learn the program and that also come up with a plan for the experience that they are going to create. They are already looking at "eyes". Eyes that look. The visitor looks at the competition but the eyes also look back at the visitor. To make the experience complete, the entire room is decorated like a boxing school including posters, and the accompanying air (from a jar). this is called the "on-boarding" feeling. What they had not tested and went wrong was working with more than 4 i-pads at the same time. Software that alows hand painting VR experience https://quill.fb.com

Abner Preis is concerned with the empowerment how you can achieve this through VR. To this end, he combines photos with drawings. Personally I find the whole rather chaotic but the target group are children. His presentation is very nice; he "walks" us through the experience on pace. You can see something similar in the video below.

https://www.abnerpreis.com

Steye Hallema was the last and for me most interesting speaker. He goes a step further by making the audience a real participant. Changing point of view. The smartphone orchestra is a method that we have tried. We all had to type the same code on our iphone, making them make sounds one by one and together forming an orchestra, but we also got to see colors and emogies (in the darkened space).

the experience was so fun and engaging that I immediately passed on his name to the organizers of an event for multimedia in Belgium. I have found a video with an interiew about another project where people can be part of the project through their smartphone.

Of course I have already taken a few first steps in the AR event and I really see my work as an installation. This is a way to involve the audience in the story.

---

Sources

1. BNO.Events available at: https://www.bno.nl/event [accessed 10 February 2020]

2. HALLEMA, Steye. 2019. Steye Hallema about storytelling through Smartphone Orchestra. Emerce. Available at: https://youtu.be/dfswEwZMiu4 [accessed 29 February 2020]

3. HUITINGA, Nienkeand Lisa WEEDA. 2019. IDFA 2019 | Trailer | Rozsypne. Available at: https://youtu.be/rQScWMTD9Zc [accessed 29 February 2020]

4. PREIS, Abner. Website Available at: https://www.abnerpreis.com [accessed 29 February 2020]

5. QUILL storytelling in VR, software; Available at: https://quill.fb.com [accessed 29 February 2020]

6. ULDEN, Yvonne.