culture – Page 16 – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

October 6, 2017

If virtual reality is film’s next big thing, how long will it take to get right?

Adelaide film festival opened with virtual reality. It was a risky and bold decision – but the technology wasn’t ready

In a break from tradition, this year’s opening night event of the Adelaide film festival featured not a feature film screening but an unprecedented party described as a “digital carnival” and a “degustation of screen delights”.

When I first read that, I thought: sounds dangerous. Dangerous because the centrepiece of the evening would be a production in virtual reality: a medium that, since its inception, has been associated with nauseated viewers and upset tummies.

September 25, 2017

Games reviews roundup: Sparc VR; Forma.8; Everybody’s Golf

A cutting-edge VR workout, a platformer with hidden depths and an old favourite spruced up for the present day

PSVR, CCP Games, cert: 3
★★★★

September 8, 2017

Home invasions, melting glaciers and Humpty Dumpty – is VR finally coming into its own?

The Venice film festival has dedicated a section to cutting edge virtual-reality features, suggesting that the format may be about to take off as mass entertainment

Lazzaretto Vecchio is a small ruined island in the Venetian lagoon, an arrangement of crumbling brick barns a short boat ride from the Lido. In its time it has been a leper colony, a plague quarantine and a dumping ground for stray dogs and cats. Thousands of corpses, animal and human, are believed to be piled beneath the buildings’ foundations.

Now Lazzaretto Vecchio has been reborn as the home of Venice VR, a pioneering section at this year’s Venice film festival. Abandoned structures have been refashioned as airy, minimalist galleries showcasing new work from the virtual-reality industry. Inside are a range of immersive installations and standalone exhibits, plus a 50-seat cinema. Visitors totter across the cobbles wearing Oculus headsets and lightweight earphones, thrilling to sounds and visions only they can experience. There are dramas about sea monsters and jewel thieves, home invaders and Holocaust survivors. Be not afeard, the isle is full of noises.

August 25, 2017

Augmented Reality Monuments For Lost Loved Ones

Augmented reality (AR) has already seen some innovative users, in fields from marketing to education to construction. A Japanese company is taking AR is a slightly unusual direction by using the technology to set up virtual ‘grave sites’ for deceased loved ones.

The service is provided by Japanese tombstone engravers Royshin Sekizai, and is available to be set up anywhere in the world, so friends and family members who can’t visit the real grave site have a place they can mourn and remember. The technology means the service can be attached to places that were special to the deceased, such as a favourite spot in the park.

Specific videos or pictures can be set up to display at the designated location, as well as text messages. If the service is set up prior to someone’s death, they can store messages and videos at a location of their own choosing.

The service costs 500 yen per month, but offer the first year for free to families. Since the service is based in Japan where cremation is how most of the dead are interred, the company will also hold the deceased ashes for up to 15 years, or for as long as the monthly fee is still paid.

Japan has long been a country that is quick to embrace new forms of technology, and AR has sprung up in various places across the country already for navigation and education and keeping you company during meals.

It remains to be seen if this unusual AR usage will take off. VRFocus will continue to report on it and other applications of AR.

August 19, 2017

Smartphone extremists and VR scuba-divers: Edinburgh’s tech trailblazers

One woman interrogates her personal assistant in Siri, The Believers Are But Brothers brings the war on terror to your mobile, and Frogman conducts an underwater murder investigation via VR headset

At the Edinburgh festival, a woman is talking to her iPhone’s personal assistant, Siri. But this isn’t a private encounter between one woman and technology. Much like Krapp’s Last Tape could be described as a piece for two performers – an actor and a tape recorder – so Siri is a show featuring a human and a digital performer. Canadian actor Laurence Dauphinais poses the program a series of questions that, as they probe into her own background, elicit ever more existentialist-sounding replies.

July 27, 2017

George Clooney, Jennifer Lawrence and Matt Damon jostle for Oscar advantage in Venice line-up

Damon stars in two of the Lido’s big films, Downsizing and Suburbicon, while Lawrence steps into horror movie territory with Darren Aronofsky’s Mother!

Renowned in recent years as a key launchpad for heavyweight Oscar contenders, the 74th Venice film festival has unveiled a lineup heavy on potential award-season frontrunners, as films start to jockey for position in earnest.

Alexander Payne, Darren Aronofsky and George Clooney are some of the big-name directors whose films will receive world premieres in competition at the festival, along with indie favourites such as Andrew Haigh, Abdellatif Kechiche and Hirokazu Koreeda, and even Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei.

July 24, 2017

Pokémon Go fans enraged as first festival ends in connectivity disaster

Developer booed on stage as gamers left unable to connect to play popular augmented reality game after mobile networks and servers overloaded

The first ever, official Pokémon Go Fest collapsed into chaos on Saturday, after attendees who had queued for hours for the chance to catch Legendary Pokémon Lugia found the game almost unplayable due to overloaded mobile phone networks.

Developer Niantic has apologised to fans, offering a full refund on the $20 ticket, $100 worth of in-game Pokécoins, and giving a Lugia to all registered attendees, but the event still casts a shadow over what was supposed to be a very public celebration of the game’s first anniversary.

the CEO of niantic getting booed on stage at pokemon go fest brings me nothing but joy pic.twitter.com/6WxTAvv76Q

Trainers, we’re aware of server and connectivity issues impacting #PokemonGOFest and are working as quickly as possible to address them.

July 22, 2017

Ready Player One: first trailer for Steven Spielberg’s virtual reality game thriller

The BFG director debuted the footage from his new film at a Comic Con event, showcasing elaborate VR and special effects

The first footage from Steven Spielberg’s forthcoming thriller Ready Player One has been released onto the internet.

June 25, 2017

Games reviews roundup: Star Ocean; Star Trek: Bridge Crew; The Fidelio Incident

A classic RPG returns in digital glory while Star Trek and Beethoven inspire exciting quests

PS4, Square Enis, cert 12
★★★★

June 19, 2017

OtherLife review – virtual reality goes bad in ambitious Australian sci-fi thriller

Ben C Lucas’s innovative rumination on the pitfalls of technology has Hollywood appeal and features a darkly charismatic performance from Jessica De Gouw

It is not uncommon for films about drug users to contain closeup shots of pupils dilating. This is hardly surprising given closeups of eyes have long been fashionable in cinema; the famous opening of Luis Buñuel’s 1929 classic Un Chien Andalou comes to mind. And after a hit of the good stuff, eyeballs look fabulous on screen, as films like Requiem for a Dream remind us.

Australian writer/director Ben C Lucas’s sophomore feature, OtherLife, joins the crazy-eyed canon in its opening moments, peppered with near full-screen vision of a narcotic-infused peeper.