The environments and narrative situations participants experience might include, for example: a wildly out-of-control forest fire, encroaching on a house or the house itself catching fire while people are still inside, only allowing them a narrow escape, but having them lose everything important to them (possibly even a loved pet or family member). Another scenario might be: participants being in a ferocious hurricane like Katrina, Sandy or Irma, with extreme winds and flooding that they desperately try to escape, or typhoon or earthquake, etc
Each performance iteration will explore ways to present realistic and terrifying climate change environments and contexts, using the available and emerging ER technology, combined with Immersive theatre to fully engage audiences, developing narrative missions that require audiences to take action to make drastic changes to save lives of characters within the simulated worlds, and to change their own attitudes in the real world – to mobilise them into action. Involving mixed reality, VR/AR, theatre/actors, outdoor and indoor spaces, and wearable haptic costumes.
Impact Summary
The project engages the artistic, performance, psychology, serious games and technology research communities, as well as entertainment industry, and general audiences to become part of the narrative environment, stimulating their other senses beyond sight and sound. Using haptic, tactile and physiological senses, triggering the emotional, empathic and survival responses, the project intends to instill a sense of social responsibility and facilitating various modes personal action. Moving beyond the domains of art versus science, towards an informed, bold culture of creative action, activating audiences to action in their own lives and communities. More than educational - motivational.
Artists
The aim for this project is to give performers more exposure to a new methodological framework for creating immersive performance experiences, using ER and haptic sensing technologies to empower them to create their own ER immersive performance work. It intends to embolden creative to become developers of their own immersive narrative/performative systems and techniques, while exploring novel approaches so. Performers themselves will benefit from both the initial narrative and immersion workshops themselves, and the conclusions drawn from them for their own work, and later when we are testing our methods and initial experiential works.
Researchers
Performance, Mixed Reality and Games researchers will benefit from both the workshops, the methods, the iterative performances and the framework for developing work, as well as how to develop the bespoke haptic costumes designed for each performance test, not to mention the conclusions drawn from the research. Those situated in the computer sciences will benefit from a different methods and the narrative framework for designing/developing VR/Mixed Reality and haptic/ wearable technology development. Psychologists and behavioural scientists will benefit from our audience 'user testing' to further their own research and development around behaviour change and inspiring activist behaviour.
Industry
The various stakeholders - including interaction designers, tech developers, computer games designers, wearable & hapticinteraction developers - will benefit from having new developments in their arena with new design approaches to developing VR/Mixed Reality/Games, adding a fresh perspective from critical and artistic voices to the field.
The haptic and wearable technology stakeholders will also benefit from the performance dimension, in terms of sensing the body in full immersion and the different types of body expression that can be witnessed in these climate scenarios. It will provide a new perspective on using a combined VR and wearable/ haptic development and research approach, again adding more critical voices to the mix.
VR/Mixed Reality/Games Manufacturers will benefit by seeing novel methods used to develop narrative and immersive interaction, through performance techniques for a widening user/consumer base.
Wider Audience/Public
This project aims to connect with the general public and to hard to reach audiences by presenting the workshops and participatory performances in public venues and outdoor locations.
Online dissemination of the full documentation (including videos, images, texts, etc) and updated information about the project progress will be available on the project website.
A showcase of the workshops and performances will also be available online and via social media, such as Facebook, Twitter,Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Vimeo, and Youtube. A broad promotional strategy to ensure publicity via targeted mainstream media, such as, Wired, BBC Arts andEntertainment, BBC Click, BBC World Service, or Sky Arts and Sky's SWIPE will also be considered.
Pathways to Impact
As the outcomes of this immersive experience project is of great value to other ER/Mixed Reality artists and designers, game companies, psychologists and various disciplines, further dissemination will be done through a
range of festivals, conferences and publications.
● Live performances
● Workshops
● Media arts and film festivals and exhibitions
● Technology expos and conferences
● Academic journals
● Online
● Using PR and Media channels
Live Events
A key part of this work is the iterative performative experiences developed to test the methods. Live participatory events are key to the overarching methodology. The contextual development and locating the work amongst other artists and interface designers in the field
will be done in the first workshop phase, and then again in the performances
themselves. Workshops will be aimed at those in creative-industries who have an interest in ER and full
body haptic experiences, and will be based in international locations.
Workshops
The workshops will include indoor and outdoor spaces with a mix of 360 film /3D VR for
participants to experience of extreme climate scenarios aimed for individuals and groups wearing headsets, but also to give a sense of the issues through storytelling. The workshop leaders will guide participants through the initial scenarios and experiences and test the “calls to action”. The participant
in the workshops will be a good source of “critical friends” to help refine the project as we
develop it for the final performances with a greater number of scenarios.
Documentary
A documentary film of the various development phases will be made available at media art and film festivals and the trailer will be
available online as a promotional tool.
Media Art and Film Festivals/Exhibitions
Arts and technology festivals and conferences, such as Abandon Normal Devices, FutureEverything
in the UK, Transmediale and/or Retune in Berlin, and Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria, the International Symposium of Electronic Arts (ISEA) roving, Resonate in Serbia, will be targeted, as well as others as they present themselves.
Academic Publications & Technology / Media Arts Conferences
There are several performance and media journals appropriate for this work, such as
Taylor & Francis' International Journal for Performance and Digital Media, Taylor & Francis' Performance Research Journal, Taylor & Francis' Digital Creativity, MIT Press' Leonardo Journal, Media Journal, Intellect's Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds, Intellect's Ubiquity, Intellect's Journal of Pervasive Media, Journal Digital Media Arts and Practice, Brunel University’s Body, Space, Technology, and the Neural.IT
magazine. These journals will be targeted for academic dissemination of the project. Other VR / Multimedia conferences and journals will also be identified. Conferences that will be targeted will be SIGGRAGH, SIGGCHI, Electronic Visualisation in the Arts (EVA) various locations and others.
Online Audiences
This work will be presented through a project website that will include videos, photos, reports and
other information that is explored through the immersive project. It will be a site for the documentation
and allow the public to view the project progression and the final outcomes of the work. The PI and
the Independent Researcher will update their progress and project development through a blog
available on this site. Further updates and PR for events will be made available through social media
such as Twitter, Facebook, Vimeo and other relevant platforms. These online platforms will also serve
as a legacy for the project when the timeline for the project has past.
**Outputs