Dreaming in VR: the art of immersive storytelling

Display Schedule

Code Completion Credits Range Language Instruction Semester
373MDVR Z 2 10S English, Czech winter

Subject guarantor

Jakub KREJČÍ

Name of lecturer(s)

Mika Johnson, Jakub KREJČÍ

Learning outcomes of the course unit

Essential points:

  1. Making an exhibition, with a ritualized context, versus a stand alone VR headset
  2. Beginnings, Middles, and Endings in VR
  3. Practical aspects How much do VR projects cost? Who funds them?
  4. Non-hierarchical approach: building a team or working with programmers, sound

designers, composers, actors, writers, art directors, visual artists etc.

  1. Initial budget vs. the real costs: people and support
  2. Brainstorming the stories you and or your collaborators want to tell

Mode of study

module

Prerequisites and co-requisites

Pre-workshop:

Read Elia Kazan’s On what makes a director

Read Jorge Luis Borges’s The Library of Babel

Watch Keiichi Matsuda’s (hyper)Reality

https://vimeo.com/166807261

Course contents

The module Dreaming in VR: the art of immersive storytelling is a two day workshop on how to conceive and share projects considered virtual, augmented, or mixed reality (XR - extended reality). The workshop’s main theme is space itself, drawing inspiration from the smallest unit of matter that we know, to the largest systems we can imagine, including our ever expanding universe. We will continually pose two questions: How are XR tools different from other mediums, in terms of how they relate to space, and what kind of stories would work best using these tools?

Why not unleash R&D toward the production of something that essentially looks like a contact lens but which is surgically implanted into the inside of your eyelid at age three or something and that when you then close your eyes there are menus that are hanging in space and you make your way into a virtual culture. What we need to do is to dematerialize our interfacing with nature. If we’re going to keep the body then we have to jettison material culture, we cannot have the body and material culture. So I can imagine a world where people appear naked and aboriginal and sacral and so forth but when they close their eyes they step into electronically sustained data banks, sensory impressions, virtual reality and so forth and so on, and that is what culture comes to be and the idea of actually building something in three-dimensional space becomes just vulgar and barbarous.

Terence McKenna talk: Trialogue 1992, tape 3&4

The workshop will also double as a space (or cyberspace) for everyone to explore, experiment with, and be in dialogue about creativity, as a practice, as few rules exist related to these new mediums. At the practical level, this means preparing participants to pitch XR ideas in a way that any audience, regardless of their knowledge of the mediums, will get excited about. To this end, Day 2 will be devoted to participants pitching their own XR projects, in our case online.

Space is not only high, it's low. It's a bottomless pit.

Sun Ra

Pre-workshop:

Watch Charles and Ray Eames’s film Powers of Ten, 1977 (relate to Sun Ra’s quote)

Read Jorge Luis Borges’s The Library of Babel

Watch Keiichi Matsuda’s (hyper)Reality

https://vimeo.com/166807261

DAY I: Creative Practice(s) - Two two hour sessions

Day I - Part I

What is a medium?

The history of mediums: from Blombos Cave Engravings, 70,000 years ago, to XR and beyond

What is a ritual?

Clip from My Dinner with Andre

Exercise #1: Virtual Space Projector

What is ritual space?

What is sacred architecture?

Discuss Borges’ The Library of Babel

Classwork for break period: Create a Temple of Awareness

Continuing our exercise Virtual Space Projector, create a blueprint - or floor plan - for a temple of awareness on an A4 piece of paper. Your temple can have walls, windows, doors, staircases, furniture, or none of the above; your temple can have paintings, sculptures, projections, holograms, fountains, lamps, candles, plants or none of the above; your temple could be in the middle of a forest, in the clouds, or under the sea; your temple can be anything you want it to be but it must reflect a narrative. Please be prepared to present your blueprint to the class, later today, in 3 minutes or less. What does your temple of awareness look, sound, smell, feel like? How and where do we enter it?

Day I - Part II

Present blueprints for Temples of Awareness

Presentation: the making of VRwandlung (from pitch to traveling exhibition)

Essential points:

1.Making an exhibition, with a ritualized context, versus a stand alone VR headset

2.Beginnings, Middles, and Endings in VR

3.Practical aspects How much do VR projects cost? Who funds them?

4.Building a team: working with programmers, sound designers, composers, actors, writers, art directors, visual artists etc.

5.Initial budget vs. the real costs: people and support

6.Brainstorming the stories you and or your collaborators want to tell

What is a pitch?

If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.

Albert Einstein

Watch and discuss The Feynman Technique

Pitch sample #1: The Infinite Library

DAY II: Part I

VR and ethics:

Dematerialisation: multiplayer VR, events, meetings, cultural exchanges

Private vs Public space: discuss Keiichi Matsuda’s (hyper)Reality

Creative Examples

Melodie Mousset’s Hana Hana

Kalina Bertin’s Manic VR

CyberRauber’s The Memories of Borderline

Ateneum Art Gate - augmented reality

Day II: Part II

Present individual or group pitches (to be decided)

Recommended or required reading

-

Assessment methods and criteria

Homework:

Read: Writing the pitch

http://archive.pov.org/blog/news/2013/02/pitching-101-the-ws-that-build-a-successful-pitch/

Use the Feynman Technique to practice your pitch

Collect images, sounds, physical objects, etc. for your pitch into a presentation

Edgar Allen Poe’s The Philosophy of Furniture

Classwork for break period: Create a Temple of Awareness

Continuing our exercise Virtual Space Projector, create a blueprint - or floor plan - for a temple of awareness on an A4 piece of paper. Your temple can have walls, windows, doors, staircases, furniture, or none of the above; your temple can have paintings, sculptures, projections, holograms, fountains, lamps, candles, plants or none of the above; your temple could be in the middle of a forest, in the clouds, or under the sea; your temple can be anything you want it to be but it must reflect a narrative. Please be prepared to present your blueprint to the class, later today, in 3 minutes or less. What does your temple of awareness look, sound, smell, feel like? How and where do we enter it?

Note

Instructor: Mika Johnson - mika@mikajohnson.com

https://mikajohnson.com/

Schedule for winter semester 2020/2021:

Date Day Time Tutor Location Notes No. of paralel
05.11.2020 10:00–15:00 Mika Johnson
online parallel1
06.11.2020 10:00–15:00 Mika Johnson
parallel1

Schedule for summer semester 2020/2021:

The schedule has not yet been prepared

The subject is a part of the following study plans