SXSW 2019: What makes an experience real?
- A fireside chat with Steve Dembo and Caitlin Krause.
One of the topics, that really interests me and that is quite present here at SXSW is the development of VR. Today I got the chance to join a fireside discussion with two experts in this field. The topic of the talk was how we will distinguish between virtual and real experiences in the future, and if we will continue to regard them as different.
We are not there yet, but it will become harder and harder not to forget that you are in a virtual world as, and when we will be able to activate more of our senses, when the picture quality reaches the level of what our eyes can perceive and when the latency is small enough. And because of the technical development, it´s just a matter of time.
Already today the technology is being used to cure people with a fear of heights, of flying and of different kind of animals. Banks are training employees on how to react in case of a rubbery. Walmart trains personnel to be ready for the chaos at Black Friday. A few months ago, I visited Vestas. Here I got the chance to crawl inside a virtual Windmill. Once you got the VR headset on a virtual elevator would take you to the top. Suddenly you found yourself 150 meters above the ground on the top of the wind turbine. And to make it more realistic you would feel the wind in your face. I must admit that it was a bit scary and that you didn´t want to walk all the way to the edge.
But how do you tell and create a VR story in the right way to make the experience as immersive as possible? Well, it takes techniques that we are still developing. In a VR experience you need to orientate yourself in a different way: Where am I? Why am I here? And who am I in this story? Caitlin Krause has just released her book: Mindful by design where she outlines what we know so far when it comes to creating these new experiences.
Krause gave a few examples of great storytelling in this new format:
Inspired by the movie: Green Book, there is a VR movie out called: Travelling while black
At Stanford University they are researching this topic as well (https://vhil.stanford.edu/projects/). They are examining how you can create empathy around the topic of racism. That has lead to a very appraised story called The 1000 cut Journey.
Earlier Stanford also released another piece called: Becoming Homeless that was first shown at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2017.
At this year´s Tribeca Film Festival kicking off the 24th. Of April, they will launch Tribeca immersive with the debut of more than 30 new immersive VR experiences. So, this new story format is evolving fast and as we speak. Of course, SXSW has it´s own VR/AR Track that will kick off together with the SXSW Film festival the 11th. Of March.
