New narrative approaches and the ‘Real’ using 360 VR

Shannon Walsh

"Nobody knows anything.”

Narrative Virtual Reality & Immersive 360 video

The EMPATHY MACHINERESTRUCTURING NARRATIVEPHYSICALITY WHAT IS THE ‘REAL’ - DO WE WANT IT?RETHINKING THE STORY

TheEmpathy Machine?

“Researchers from Washington University …scanned the brains of fiction readers and discovered that their test subjects created intense, graphic mental simulations of the sights, sounds, movements, and tastes they encountered in the narrative. In essence, their brains reacted as if they were actually living the events they were reading about.”

The New School for Social Research (Kidd & Castano):Genre (popular) Fiction, Non-Fiction had no resultsLiterary Fiction improved capacity for empathy, and a reader’s capacity to understand what others are thinking and feeling

York University (Raymond Mar):86 fMRI studiesSubstantial overlap in brain networks used to understand stories and those used to navigate interactions with others

Mar, R. 2011. The Neural Bases of Social Cognition and Story Comprehension, Annual Review of Psychology Vol. 62: 103-134Kidd, David Comer & Emanuele Castano. 2013. Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind, Science. Vol. 342, Issue 6156, pp. 377-380

The New Novel (1877)Winslow Homer (USA, 1821–1896)

Literature “prompts the reader to imagine the characters’ introspective dialogues. This psychological awareness carries over into the real world, which is full of complicated individuals whose inner lives are usually difficult to fathom.”

-Scientific American 2013

Will VR displace or enhance this capacity?

Could VR function more like literature – allowing you into the interior worlds of others – in ways that have not been possible in cinema and radio?

CHRIS MILK – “Building the ultimate empathy machine”

A still from Vrse.works’ virtual reality film, “Clouds over Sidra” 2015, produced for the United Nations by Gabo Arora and Chris Milk

Clouds Over Sidra

The Zaatari Refugee Camp is home to 130,000 Syrians fleeing violence and war. Children make up half the camp's population. This is the story of Sidra, a 12-year old girl who has spent the last 18 months in Zaatari.

"We can't tell the viewer exactly what to look at and if someone's more interested in the shoes the person's wearing than what they're doing then that's their choice.”

–ABC Rural Reporter Cassie Hough

“The first time VR made me cry…”

Who exactly are we “feeling” for?-Poverty Porn-Euro-Lensed colonialist ‘tourism’-i.e. Crossroads refugee & poverty immersion experiences at Davos

Listserv comments from Liz Man / Michele Stephenson

“We can’t be around the camera or we’re in the shot.”

On the Brink of Famine, South Sudan VR doc

“If you grip the handles, sir, you will… share his suffering, as you know, but that is not all. You will also participate in his… ‘World-view’ is not the correct term. Ideology? No. […] No word will do, and that is the entire point. It cannot be described — it must be experienced.”

— The Little Black Box, Philip K. Dick (Published in Worlds of Tomorrow, 1964)

Machine To Be Another: Gender Swap

https://vimeo.com/84150219

In the Eyes of the AnimalMashmallow Laser Feast

“We thought of PLACEHOLDER as a set of environments imbued with narrative potential - places that could be experienced and marked through narrative activity. When a person visits a place, the stories that are told about it - by companions, by rock art or graffiti, or even by oneself through memories or fantasies - become part of the character of the place. Stories give us ideas about what can be done or imagined in a place” – Brenda Laurel, 1994

The “Real” reconfigured?

The ‘Real’?

Do we want THE REAL?

As Lacan reminds us, it is an impossible state, one that only may occur in adulthood through moments of complete rupture or trauma, when the symbolic order has collapsed.

6 x 9 Project Creators: Francesca Panetta & Lindsay Poulton Key Collaborator: The Mill

“6×9 utilizes a lot of innovative immersive storytelling techniques to show you the hallucinogenic effects of spending an extended time within a 6′ by 9′ prison cell. You experience blurred vision, floating, objects that disappear if you try to look at them, and a lot of animated text projected onto the virtual walls.”

Viens! (Come!)

“In this sensually playful, live-action VR, three women and four men, all naked, appear out of nowhere in the white sunny space of a bright room outside of time. They meet, touch, share their energy, and are transformed spiritually; they let themselves become one with the world.” VR film by Michel Reilhac & Melanie le Grand

Slippery “Truths”

Topics like Racism & Police shootings: Janicza Bravo's “Hard World for Small Things”, live action VR of a day in the life of a tight-knit community of South Central Los Angeles.

Multiple perspectives, reveal narrative fallibility, the ambiguity of reality and the authority of narrative. No single truth: “the fact that we are present is not a guarantee that we see what really truly happens.”

Rose Troche and Morris May

Considering the BodyA whole new set of issues need to be taken into consideration: paramount perhaps is the physical body of the spectator;360 Video is not VR

NEW NARRATIVEIn the ‘Round’Intentionally having things that can’t all be seenImportance of Camera PlacementSound as triggerInside stream of consciousness: Literature