Venice, Aug. 31 (BUS): At the Venice International Film Festival, virtual reality is only a small part of the immersive experience.
On a small island, just a short waterbus ride from the main festival headquarters in Lido, festival-goers can enter the Metaverse. They can play games, “jump the world” with a tour guide, dress up in costumes with background dancers, or even help Coco Chanel develop Chanel No. 5.
The program, curated by Liz Rosenthal and Michelle Rele, runs from September 1 through September 10 and offers a hands-on glimpse into the future of storytelling, The Associated Press reports.
“It’s the biggest version we’ve ever done,” Rosenthal said.
Prototyping has also evolved in the past couple of years when the default rifle program had to become default. So for this grand return to Lazzaretto Vecchio, they’ve also given the program a new, more comprehensive name: Venice Immersive.
“We wanted to refocus on how quickly the field is diversifying,” Reelhsch said. “We didn’t want to focus on one technology like VR, but try to represent all kinds of different ways to deliver an immersive experience.”
Of the 43 projects, some only need a VR headset. Some of them are massive 360-degree installations and others offer mixed “reality”.
One of their most ambitious projects was a commitment to offer tours of virtual worlds for small groups. Realms is a general term that basically means a space where people can come together virtually – it could be a beach, a forest, or a sci-fi fantasy space.
In the world, Reilhac explained, you can hang out or do activities like playing mini golf or even dog training. Like many things in Venice Immersive, worlds and world hopping is the best thing to experience.
“Framerate: Pulse of the Earth” is one of the multi-screen installations on display that the curators said demonstrates the potential of this art form. The project focuses on changing the landscape and is made with 3D scanning technology.
“We aim to reveal changes to the planet that are caused by nature and also caused by human-centred industries,” said Framerate Director Matthew Shaw. “We see sites of destruction, extraction, and habitation, we see crops, we see growth, and we see erosion.”
To experience “Framerate,” audiences enter a darkened room where they are surrounded by screens that act as “3D portals” into vast scenes, such as a 200-foot cliff eroding and collapsing into the sea over the course of a year or a forest transforming in 12 months. You can stand anywhere in the room, move around and choose what you want to focus on, be it a ramp or a single pebble.
The team working on the project captured these scenes in Norfolk and Glasgow, where they filmed daily for a year. It wasn’t just someone setting up a camera and tripod and leaving him to shoot, Shaw said. It took a fair amount of research, development and innovation to make this happen.
“We don’t just make artwork,” Shaw said. “We build tools to make it work as well. Not only could we 3D scan something at the landscape scale, but could we scan it as it moved?”
Shaw is just one of the pioneers of the new immersive art forms on display at the festival. Another high-profile project is “Rencontre(s) by Mathias Chelburg”, which features the voice of Marion Cotillard.
The “multisensory tactile experience” invites you to step into the shoes of a perfumer in 1921 when Gabrielle Chanel met Ernest Beau and they created Chanel No. 5.
There is also an interactive VR game set in England in the 1920s inspired by the “Peaky Blinders” TV show called “Peaky Blinders: The King’s Ransom” which also features the voice of Cillian Murphy.
Others are more serious, such as “Stay Alive, Son,” in which the player wears the shoes of a Cambodian genocide survivor.
Reilhac and Rosenthal hope that film fans of the festival will venture to Immersive Island for some experience.
“There is no other A-list festival in the world that has committed so much to presenting immersiveness as a new art form,” Reilhac said.
“By combining immersive arts with prestigious feature films, we are elevating the concept of immersive arts as a true art form rather than just a technological gimmick.”
Right now, “there is no real market for immersive arts,” Rielh said. Creative people in Venice do it out of passion and curiosity. But he thinks that could change.
“It is the birth of a new art form and perhaps a new industry,” he said.