Immersion
What is it?
For the term ‘Immersive Adventures’ I am working with Olivia Powell and Giulia Brancati.
We began by asking ourselves what ‘immersion’ means both in terms of technology and in a narrative sense. In the initial mind-mapping phase we stumbled upon this interesting read-
The End of Storytelling: The Future of Narrative in the Storyplex by Stephanie Riggs. It was an extremely relevant book and addressed most of what we had been discussing and questioning.
Subsequently we found ourselves having a lot of questions about immersion and wondered what would be the best way to explore them.
What happens if we write a story question? or a story made of questions?
Are we crows by pots,
thirsty for the deep unknown
with stones, beaks in phones?
Plop plop as they drop,
does the ocean climb, does it
swallow, does it gulp?
Do I dip toes in
this pool of light, to drown in
knee deep reflection?
Plop, splash, squish, dissolve
pop, two, three. Am I the sponge?
Or am I the sea?
Or are we but pots,
Immersed in stones, awaiting
thirsty crows, all alone?
When I personally think about immersion what comes to mind is this annual ritual back home:
Visarjan — translates to immersion in English. Here’s a summary of the significance of the ritual immersion of clay sculptures of Lord Ganesha in water.
“This practice serves as a reminder to the devotee about the transitory nature of life and how our physical form is returned to the elements after death but the immortal soul is reincarnated in another form.”
https://www.ganapati.org/vageesh-express/2015/9/24/significance-of-visarjan
Olivia had a seed of a story about a funeral for a dead fish on the beach, that we had been engaging with by writing little responses. We began to think of the story and a potential experience surrounding it -in terms of reincarnation.
The term was peppered with several workshops and seminars that fed into our understanding of ‘immersive storytelling’.
Seminar
The VR Symposium was an extremely stimulating event. After the panel discussion and the Q&As I was left wondering about some of the topics that came up. I didn’t find myself relating to the questions the topics arose. As some of my Asian counterparts brought up, there seems to be certain inherent understanding we possess in matters about the ‘virtual’ and the ‘real’ that perhaps keeps us from wondering about it or fearing it. However it did make me wonder why that’s so.
“Your entire life is a Virtual Reality, because you are seeing it only the way it happens in your mind” — Sadhguru
Some of us with similar feelings engaged in a discussion afterwards and the word Maya came up and that cleared a whole lot up. Lifting the following from Wikipedia :-
Maya (/ˈmɑːjə/; Devanagari: माया, IAST: māyā), literally “illusion” or “magic”,has multiple meanings in Indian philosophies depending on the context. In ancient Vedic literature, Māyā literally implies extraordinary power and wisdom. In later Vedic texts and modern literature dedicated to Indian traditions, Māyā connotes a “magic show, an illusion where things appear to be present but are not what they seem”. Māyā is also a spiritual concept connoting “that which exists, but is constantly changing and thus is spiritually unreal”, and the “power or the principle that conceals the true character of spiritual reality”.
Further, there’s a book about this — Maya: The World as Virtual Reality by Richard L.Thompson
I just happened upon this book and I’m yet to read it but from the summary I am positive it will provide some interesting insights and probably answer some of the questions that came up.
Workshops
A workshop with Martin Percy got us to experiment with shooting in 360. We explored frames within frames-drawing the eyes of a viewer within a 360 space where you normally wouldn’t know where to look. We even placed a mirror on the ground, reflecting the sky.
The way we 360 cameras render scale in VR is so flattering. I was so tall! For once Ivan had to look up to see me! Ha!
Technical Workshop
The RCA definitely has a constant influx of shiny new toys. The motion capture studio being one of them. I never thought I’d be able to experience what that’s like first hand. We booked a fun afternoon to experiment with the new equipment.
It made us think about the relationship between these movements and how they could translate or correspond to various events/actions in the virtual environment. How could we map the data? I wonder if it is possible to be immersed in someone else’s movement.
We were left with so many questions.
