culture – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

July 22, 2024

Edinburgh festival 2024: 20 theatre shows making a scene this summer

With subjects ranging from the deadly serious to the downright silly, this year’s shows include plays about addiction, politics, funk and Come Dine With Me

“To be or not to be” … that Shakespearean soliloquy inspired what sounds like an innovative production by Peruvian company Teatro La Plaza. Writer-director Chela De Ferrari’s adaptation is a free version of the text placing the stories of people with Down’s syndrome centre stage. It promises to turn the tragedy into a joyful experience too, complete with rap, performed by eight actors who have Down’s.
Lyceum, 15-17 August

July 1, 2024

The best theatre to stream this month: Shakespeare v the Tories, Mel C’s dance show and more

This month’s picks include a Starlight Express intro for kids, a rollicking wedding play at the National and an explosive hour of dance

Micheál Mac Liammóir’s 1960 solo show interweaved the private and public lives of Oscar Wilde with excerpts from the great Irish wit’s oeuvre. Alastair Whatley – who directed The Importance of Being Earnest a few years ago – recently performed Mac Liammóir’s monologue at Reading Rep. A recording of that production, directed by Michael Fentiman, is available on Original Online from 1 July.

January 14, 2024

Egg timer, Coke bottle and a skull cast: VR puts Burns memorabilia in reach

Glasgow University has set up virtual trips showing stories behind the poems and exploring the poet’s life

Guests attending Burns Night suppers this month can get unexpected help in appreciating Scotland’s national bard – thanks to virtual reality. The Art of the Burns Supper has been created by Glasgow University researchers and takes participants on virtual trips that reveal the stories behind his poems and songs and his love of whisky – and haggis.

The VR experiences have been created by scanning items from Burns collections across Scotland as well as key sites and places in his life. The result is an eclectic vision of the poet whose birthday is celebrated by Scots across the world on 25 January.

October 2, 2023

AI Vincent van Gogh talks of ‘mental health struggles’ in Paris exhibition

Musée d’Orsay adds AI and VR to display of artist’s last works, never previously seen together

For a man who died in 1890, Vincent van Gogh seemed remarkably au fait with 21st-century parlance.

Asked why he had cut off his left ear, the artist replied that this was a misconception and he had in fact only cut off “part of my earlobe”. So why did he shoot himself in the chest with a revolver, causing injuries from which he died two days later?

September 8, 2023

Rage against the machine? Why AI may not mean the death of film

Technology is Hollywood’s current arch nemesis, but as exhibitors on Venice film festival’s ‘immersive island’ will tell you, AI, VR and XR could lead to a brighter future

One of the hottest tickets at the 80th Venice film festival isn’t a movie at all but a VR installation on the event’s self-styled “Immersive Island”. Each user sits at a computer and answers a series of personal questions, which the exhibit – in the space of a few seconds – converts into a bespoke portrait of their life. The project, Tulpamancer, is officially the work of Brooklyn-based artists Marc Da Costa and Matthew Niederhauser. In practice, though, it amounts to a creative collaboration between the user and AI.

Generative AI plays the role of Sleeping Beauty’s bad fairy at Venice. The ongoing writers and actors’ strike was largely prompted by fears over the new technology’s impact on film and TV production and has resulted in numerous star performers deciding to skip this year’s festival. But in the meantime, AI – unwelcome, uninvited and arguably misunderstood – has already joined the party. It’s hiding in the cracks of the films on the main programme and helping facilitate the creation of the XR (extended reality) pieces on the island.

September 4, 2023

Venice’s brave new world: my cosmic trip to Immersion Island and back

On the Lazzaretto Vecchio, the small island home of Venice film festival’s Immersive section, I donned an XR headset and boldly went where most festivalgoers don’t

Traditional cinema hogs the limelight at the Venice film festival but there’s an array of wilder delights just behind the main site. Hang a right past the PalaBiennale theatre and a boat whisks you across to the Lazzaretto Vecchio, the small island home of the event’s Venice Immersive section. It’s a two-minute ride but it feels like light years away.

Venice’s self-styled “Immersion Island” is dedicated to showcasing emergent technologies – and by definition emergent storytelling. There are 28 XR (extended reality) productions in the main competition, together with 24 “world gallery” tours hosted by VRChat, and these run the gamut from interactive movies through 360-degree videos to the sort of imposing standalone installations you’d otherwise find in a modish art gallery. The medium is nascent and even the language around it is still bedding down. The works on the schedule aren’t quite films or games or art displays, although most will contain elements from all three disciplines. “We like to call them experiences,” says the woman on the desk with a shrug.

August 30, 2023

Birmingham Royal Ballet uses virtual reality to make dance more accessible

Company aims to allow those unable to go to the theatre, including neurodivergent people, the elderly and children, to enjoy its shows

A pioneering “virtual stage” launched by Birmingham Royal Ballet will use immersive technology to help neurodivergent audiences access their shows for the first time.

The project uses virtual and augmented reality to create performances and immersive experiences that can be seen by audiences who may otherwise be unable to go to the theatre.

August 12, 2023

‘The night is literally in my hands’: what it’s like to attend an acid house rave – in virtual reality

Using VR and haptic vests to transport users to a sweaty club in 1980s Britain, In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats is so realistic that you might need a lie down afterwards

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I’m not the kind of person who you’d normally find at an illegal rave at a regular raving time, let alone 9am on a Wednesday. But that’s where I found myself this week – virtually, anyway: with a haptic vest strapped on to my back, a controller in each hand and a virtual reality headset covering my eyes, I’m transported back to 1989, hooning through the suburbs with my friends to find a secret dancefloor.

Darren Emerson’s award-winning interactive VR film, In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats, tracks the acid-house movement and rave scene in Coventry, UK. It’s wholly transportive – I forget that I’m actually standing in the middle of an empty studio in metro Melbourne, because for half an hour I’m in the back of a car, in a friend’s poster-strewn bedroom, in a police station, hurtling down a freeway, bumping up against sweaty bodies in a club and walking through a forest hungover as the day breaks and the sun peeks through the trees.

August 9, 2023

‘Even closing my eyes is an intense movement’: the VR experience that simulates a serious neurological condition

Ben Joseph Andrews’ chronic vestibular condition leaves him with migraines and dizziness – which he’s transformed into a VR experience. Luke Buckmaster gives it a go

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You would’ve heard of déjà vu: the surreal sensation of having previously experienced the present, or something like it. You may not have heard of jamais vu: the sensation of being unfamiliar with things that should be recognisable. Like your house, your desk, even your hands.

Guy Pearce’s protagonist in Christopher Nolan’s 2000 thriller Memento, who can’t create new memories, has a version of it. But the kind I got a taste of, in a fascinating “world-first mixed reality” experience featured at this year’s Melbourne international film festival, is jamais vu of a very different variety.

July 11, 2023

Melbourne international film festival 2023: 10 things to see and do, from BlackBerry to new Kelly Reichardt

Plus Josh O’Connor as a grumpy archaeologist, Hugo Weaving as a scabby hermit, and a queer noir – all part of Miff’s 71st edition

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Australia’s cinephiles have been well served by this year’s Melbourne international film festival, with a program that – as usual – sources an eclectic range of productions from around the globe. Announced on Tuesday, the festival’s 71st iteration runs in Melbourne cinemas from 3-20 August – and in regional cinemas from 11-13 and 18-20 August. An additional online version will run from 18-27 August.

Many of this year’s highlights have already played at Sydney film festival – so click here to read more about No Bears, Hello Dankness, Smoke Sauna Sisterhood, 20,000 Species of Bees and How to Blow up a Pipeline.