 June 14th. We the North Champs. What a great slogan that is, you know, to draw people together and to make people feel like they're part of something and as many of you know, Canada has one basketball team. I lived in Vancouver for a while where the other basketball team was for a short period of time and I have to say, like, there wasn't a lot of sadness or tears when that franchise moved. So, you know, it's not a game that everybody is passionate about all the time but I think that there's something about these kind of runs that bring people together and even being out on the streets in Kingston, we're like, oh yeah, this is exciting. This is community expressed in a different way. Anyhow, that's my morning reflection. We can all get on a bus now. So, today we are in day two of Folda, the Festival of Live Digital Art. My name is Adrienne Wong. I'm the artistic producer of Spider Web Show, which is the producing entity of the festival and I'm one of the co-curators of the festival along with Michael Wheeler and Sarah Garten Stanley. And we are here this morning to have what we've termed in the schedule an informal breakfast chat about VR. And with us, I'm going to get you to introduce yourself and say your name because I'm actually afraid that I might mess it up. Hello everybody, it's great to be here with you. I'm Vojtek Murkowski and I've been producing film and animation for the last 15 years and in 2015 I started developing my company focused on VR and 360 video production. Then in 2017 I started producing and working in VR in the context of theatre and art in a collective, artistic collective called Dream Adoption Society. And we would like to talk about VR and the different aspects of it. Feel free please to ask questions and interrupt me. It would be great. So I would like to start maybe connected with the slogan, the North. You remember this first documentary film in the history of cinematography Nanook of the North by Robert Flaherty. And it occurred after years from the letters of the director that actually the whole film was staged. And that was quite an interesting case because everybody associated this film through the documentary and really the first one. It is the first one probably, but for me it doesn't really matter whether it was really very staged or it was just shot, let's say, without the influence of the director. Because what we want to really achieve whether it's documentary or fiction, VR, theatre, I think it's magic. Some kind of magic, some kind of... What exactly? So this is I think an interesting question what we would like to achieve creating our pieces of art. I think it's the varieties so big and there are so many options that it depends on each artist. Did I interrupt you here because I think I'm curious about what this idea of magic, creating magic, what does that mean to you and dream adoption societies you're making your pieces? What kind of magic or experience are you trying to give to your audience members? Of course it depends on each piece, but generally you could say that we are really into kind of meditation in VR. So everyone is thinking about storytelling, everyone thinks how to tell a story in VR. We don't have editing so much, we don't have the frame composition. We can't create meaning with a cut, it's very difficult how to do it. So maybe after these few years of work we at our collective thought that maybe it's not about storytelling actually. Maybe it's about the experience itself, maybe it's about like putting somebody in the skin of somebody else. Maybe it's about putting a viewer inside the head of the artist. So I think it's the very interesting moment when first time in life, in history I would say, in this new medium you can be actually in the head of the artist. So this is really interesting and I was writing my diploma about editing and what I found out about the most important aspect of editing, what is the most important? I think emotion, like creating emotions. So for me the story is on the second place. And depending on the piece of work we want either to achieve a method of physical high or some kind of feeling in the viewer that doesn't have to be really connected with understanding the piece, with analyzing the piece, but more about immersing her or him. So in our works we aim to abstract art. We are in the direction of performance, theater or viewer installations that are not supposed to teach you something. But the best would be if you just become speechless after a piece. After a piece you can't say anything because any word would just spoil the meaning or it would be too flat or too shallow. Yeah, it's something that takes a bit more time to digest and process because it's new and leaves you in a state of, like that idea of meditation strikes me. I just want to say for those who have entered our room, just entered our room that this is an informal chat. So I'm going to try and keep my eyes in the room so if you have something you want to add, like jump in there, raise your hand and I'll try to moderate. Yeah. So one thing that I wrestle with in some of these, I haven't done actually VR performance, but lots of immersive and digitally enhanced and not, is it's fantastic and create amazing effects that can totally get you in the head of the artist, which is a great thing, but it can also be a dangerous thing. Brecht talked about many other people. Insofar as you become completely subsumed within that one perspective and lose your critical distance, and that perspective in some cases can be, I've seen VR pieces about abuse of immigrants and terrorism, all sorts of really powerful things that you really become is really useful, but it's also, it is a simulated environment. So the fact that Nanook of the North wasn't, was presenting itself as reality and wasn't, if you have a simulated environment that presents itself as reality, you feel like you've been there, you feel like you've had first-aid experience and the propagandistic potential of that is phenomenal. So I'm wondering if you have any thoughts about how to navigate that challenge. Well, I think a very interesting idea of filmmaking was invented let's say by Andy Warhol and he was just leaving the camera for so many hours and then there is always a moment of truth when somebody is just forgetting that the camera is there or it's just happening. So it's different when it comes to interactive animated experiences and shooting, but I don't think I really understood your question because maybe you could guide me more. So do you mean, I'm going to try? Yes, thank you. So do you mean like inside of these VR, these immersive experiences that it's easy to give ourselves over to that experience and to say the meditation or to that kind of first-time experience feeling and because it's all new information we disconnect a little bit from that part of our brains that's reading the intent of the piece or bringing some understanding of the context, political social context of it or understanding it. You used the word critical, I'm trying to define something without using the word but in that critical way. Is that what you're just talking about? Well, partly, but it isn't so much the newness of it. It's really when you present, I mean this problem with traditional film and production on the media as well, but it becomes completely compelling so that you're completely absorbed in your empathy of 100% with the piece and it's not a problem, it's like the pieces that you were demonstrating before were going to be some wonderful fantasy surrealist realms. Really a problem. But if you're representing Nannik of the North or anything, as soon as you get into any sort of area of dealing with issues of gender or race or class the danger is that you're going to be giving people this first-hand what's it like to be in an interming camp and then whatever biases of the person that's creating it become your reality and you walk out of it and the power is I was there, I felt it, but you weren't really and that reality was constructed for you and the piece really prevents you from having that sort of critical distance and perspective on what biases unconscious may be well-intentioned, maybe not, might have informed the piece. I wonder if it's different because I mean people certainly experience that reading books, they read The Call of the Wild and they were like, oh, this is it and I know that I've certainly done that reading Perles Bach when I was a kid going, oh, this is China, right? And feeling like I have an understanding of what I think from her books. No, I don't. And so we've, over time and literacy, my own literacy of reading I get to understand that that is positionality and so I guess what I understand your question would be is like is it harder or different in VR than in any of these other media? And there are strategies that people have come up with in theater and in writing if you're concerned about doing that, to both suck people in but also to create that sort of reflection and dialogue. I wonder if VR has developed similar or could develop similar or if it's so, the rhetoric is so profound of immersion and the power of giving you that first person to be so powerful that I think there must be a way to do it. Yeah, I'd like to riff on it a little bit as a thought experiment. If you're in a VR environment and you learn that puppies, let's say little brown puppies, are actually killers and they are pursuing you and you live within that reality in a repetitive way that your capacity, I suspect over time will be diminished to be able to understand in the real world if there's such a thing that puppies are not actually that way anymore and I think that critical distance that you speak about, that feeling of it being so totally real and how we hold those experiences, not just images but the emotional response. As a thought experiment I think that is a real danger but also the crazy thing is propagandistic-wise you can say it's an environment for absolute good like the heightening of empathy or whatever but then back to positionality, it's like from whose perspective. We should remember about the suspension of disbelief and just the fact that we are not aware that we are in the room, we are actually there but as far as I'm concerned it's always like this, the artist wants you to see his or her vision sometimes it's gentle, sometimes it's straightforward but here it's just stronger as far as I'm concerned. And like this may sound a little antagonistic but you're not giving the audience number enough intelligence I think you have to not assume that everyone who's coming into this is dumb. Everyone is going to voluntarily come into this they're going to be able to, with this suspension of disbelief whatever their understanding is, that is what their motive thought is going to be that's what their experience is going to be. You can't necessarily be concerned or be worried of well this is like what my propaganda is going to be or my intent is going to be because you have to give them agency and we can't just assume that well they're not artists so they're not going to understand and that's what I was thinking of when you were saying all these things for me and my experience there is this way that we talk about ourselves as artists that kind of does come off as elitist and we have to also think about anybody can be an artist anybody can experience these things and so we can't have that separation that divide within this context because it happens in anything in everyday life, not just artistry Absolutely and even with one of the things you're talking about about feeding and experience rather than telling a story or teaching a lesson that's one of my themes actually with theater for young audiences I saw some baby theater which is truly like an immersive thing because the babies are like in like wow this is the first time I've seen this this is I've never been here before and they're just like always in this state of awe unless they're hungry or tired but the piece that I saw was by Danish company and it was it's experiential so they're touching things they're seeing dancers they're invited into the space so when you're talking about these things I'm like that's what the babies are doing in that show like they're moving into the space they're dancing they're hearing the music they're interacting with the performers and when the artists were talking about the work they said we feel like we have to teach children things in our artwork for them but children just are also allowed to just have culture and just have art and that the meaning can be made later so when you talk about the meditation of it the experience of it and you come out and not knowing like I read those Perles book books and I went in I went deep in and I reflect over time about what that means and what the cultural context is because sometimes I feel like we put too much on the shoulders of the artists to sort all that stuff out prior to just making the thing and seeing how it rests with the other things on the shelf and I think in life also it's not about only understanding you know you have so many different emotions and some aspects that come to you that like imitating somehow life is the magic for me too and it's not that approach with analysis yeah yes and yeah I agree oh okay I mean go one two so the idea of the overwhelming persuasiveness in my mind is a little bit moderated at least in the form of the technology I've experienced like a commercial arcade with kids you know in that you're in this world you know in your brain visually but you've got this heavy thing on your head and you're feathered by a wire you can only move so much you're aware of your little feet shuffling so you have I like this double consciousness of like zooming around in this world where I like shot things with paint guns or whatever and having this enclosed sort of weird constrained space so I was very aware that I was in this VR world created by this thing because of the other cues my body were giving me and it is actually to my mind a little bit more present maybe because it's also very new but you know when you sit in a theater and the lights go down the performer starts you really lose your body for the most part you just forget you're sitting in a chair in the space you're projecting your head forward so I don't know that that propagandistic thing is you know can necessarily be that of a woman because you're aware of your own positionality because right now the present about the end of the technology there's a somatic feedback that is always saying this is your anchor how do you deal with the body in the works like how do you deal with that somatic input the body input it is very difficult to create immersive 360 video experience because of the body as far as I'm concerned so we made so many videos without the body and you look down and there's nothing there it's very weird if you place the camera too low then you feel like a child it's also not the best there was this documentary by Felix and Paul about a famous basketball player LeBron James and he was huge there you know and it was really working because maybe in reality it's the same so this perspective is important when it comes to video but when it comes to 6 degrees of freedom experiences on one hand hands are enough and I think if you can see your hands and your fingers that is really enough on one hand in 360 video after many cases we found out that if we can't have a first person perspective the camera on the helmet kind of shot then a piece of black gradient mask underneath you is the best I mean people associate black as nothing and that's why it works the best and the perception is being kind of in a donut like the donut hole that's very Canadian thing to say international sign of the donut but also it depends on the experience I would like to tell you about few experiences I found in art galleries because the art world is taking VR medium and I'm very happy about it I've seen last year in Guggenheim in New York a piece where the user is a basketball and it was very immersive because you were being played by a Chinese NBA player it was an exhibition by a Chinese artist so first he was coming to you you were a small ball and this basketball player was huge and then he catches you and then goes and slams and then you come back it's like 40 seconds maximum but the no-share effect is massive you almost fell off the chair but it was loose somehow and the context was about the player's rage or maybe not rage but his point of view he's always a little bit controversial when it comes to what's going on in China but the most hardcore VR piece I know is by Jordan Wolfson real violence it was presented at Whitney Biennial in New York in March 2017 did you say the name of it? Jordan Wolfson and it was 90 seconds like shot of a figure viciously beating another person kneeling in front of them with a baseball bat and there was no context no story, no reason whatsoever and art world can be very disruptive and I like that idea not to create only beautiful and let's say quiet pieces but this kind of context this kind of VR is also interesting most of the people didn't watch it till the end and what's the point? just to show it because so many people still don't understand that violence is just not acceptable and this was just the very first approach to VR at first everybody thought that it's about empathy but now I think it's more about watching your hands watching your body being inside of the character and talking about the body we made one piece multiplayer experience called body extension open source and I could show it to you on Saturday and you have the full body in HTC Vive so the quality is quite good you are morphing you don't know whether you are a man or a woman and it's a multiplayer piece so you can interact with as many people as we have had set and it was really interesting to watch people how they act in this piece and some groups of friends were dancing together some were touching their hands because you could touch in the real world and in VR too but we didn't have enough time and technology to track exactly the people's place so actually you are not touching if you are coming in VR world to somebody you are not touching the person in reality so you can even go inside somebody else and it was a mistake from our side but it occurred the mistake was working the same similar situation with AR we used AR core which doesn't have at this moment image tracking so when you place this augmented reality animation on the book and you take out the book the animation doesn't follow the book it's not tracked with the book it will stay here but then because of this we can put the augmented reality anywhere and leave it there and shoot it for example and see it so it's also interesting to know about the fact that from some mistakes and technical boundaries you can make a value but coming back to the body it's really very interesting to have a body in VR and to have the ability to touch other virtual bodies there because our VR experience was about pleasure what's about asking yourself about how do you react and interact with others I was not shy so I was just touching and interacting with everybody but then I found out I can be a little bit not violent but abusive maybe in this VR but then I thought about it so this is a big responsibility and ethical matter what can we show and how we act in this world so we should probably think about it more and another piece that I found very very interesting was during Venice Biennale in 2017 it was Christian Lamert's La Apparazione it's like a virtual meeting with a crucified Jesus and it's a three minute piece Jesus is golden and from his wounds is leaking liquid gold and he's dying and really you can hear his wounds breaking as if he was wooden a little bit you can see his body so closely because you can walk around and it was really very powerful for me to see it and just to be in the dream of the artist and the last thing that I want to say now about experiences was that the example of Paul McCarthy's work he made this piece what is your name? Mary and Eve experiment and it was like a continuation of his work so I like the fact that Olafur Eliasson or Marina Abramovich or other artists extend their previous works and come into VR in Paul McCarthy's it was on one hand the production wise it was interesting because the actors were shot in LA in a studio, motion capture and then brought to Denmark Copenhagen and Korra Contemporary Gallery finished the work in VR so the artists didn't have to even move from his studio and it was about the position of women and he used two characters from a western movie with John Wayne it was like a wide, wide west always the women were in a strange situation and their position was so much weaker and here in this piece there are two women who are very aggressive towards you and there are many of them coming to you swearing at you and after 10 minutes I was very, very tired but I like it I like it when it's glitchy when it's something you know makes you feel uncomfortable so these kind of experiences are important for me and interesting I have a question about have you ever thought about the experience of going into a VR moment is kind of jarring because we don't have a body for other reasons as well and the experience of coming out of it if you've had an intense experience and one can also be kind of jarring you take it off and all of a sudden you're back in this room with other people and the jump between the two is really extreme sometimes do you ever think about the transition out as part of your work? I've seen, yes, we're doing such experiments for example one of our VR experiences has seven chapters each chapter is a little bit different one chapter you have a body it's kind of accurate in another chapter you are just a camera and you don't have it and for some of the viewers we asked it was quite disturbing because it was like okay you have the power to move you have your body but then we take it from you so we are cruel as creators but it's still an experiment so we are finding the way and we would like to stay experimental and fresh so there is one example when a character is dying and even in 360 degrees video and I saw this film when everything is from first person perspective view camera on the helmet and then at the moment of the incident in a car crash then the camera moves on a crane and then on a drone up and maybe it's simple but it works so for me when it comes to editing in VR and when it comes to these transitions that you told about it's all about the concept if it goes well with the script with the concept it will be good but just changing from one to another without any reason is pointless I understand where you're coming from but I mean also even more zoomed out the idea of putting on the I saw one piece where you go in and you sit in a curtain room and it's a very stylized room and then you put on the headset and inside the headset you're still in that room and I felt that that was such an effective transition into that world because it really blurred the boundaries between the two worlds and they kind of negotiated that really beautifully just wondering if you're thinking about that transition into the headset and the world inside the headset versus the world around you and staging that at all Yes, it's very important and this Carna y Arena by Alejandro Inarito was probably one of the first pieces where you walk on the desert and in reality you take off your shoes and walk on sand the same I've seen in Prague recently on a bigger exhibition 36Q by Dutch University and the collaboration of many countries so the more objects and props you have that you can actually touch in real time and in VR using for example VR trackers like HTC trackers the better it's really very interesting and very powerful when you have the same construction the same set design in virtual and real world so limiting the area that you walk on is one approach to this then some constructions for example I recently came up with an idea to make a metal construction that you can hang on and you have the same in VR and you hang then you can have a Grand Canyon or just to work on your fears but but seriously yes it's a very good way for example that you have a torch or an object that you can grab that some of the characters are represented as sculptures I've seen it at The Void the Star Wars experience that you can watch in states and UK I suppose so I was talking to the former D3PO I don't remember the name and then I reached with a hand and there was the sculptor there it was very simple just a metal face of the robot but he was there then all the heat or some air or some small coming in both realities is very powerful and it gets the immersion the feeling of presence because we want to achieve this presence and I was mentioning before we need to have very good environment sometimes similar to the real one we need to have the body and each of these aspects we must think about it very precisely and talk with others about it ok we have to have the environment but what environment because why etc ok body but what body etc etc so the body then communication with others is also great so when you have an actor and an avatar that you can speak to and they are connected somehow technologically this is great this is really fantastic because when you want to communicate with other people it's a great feeling and the same when you are in VR you are looking for somebody to talk to you want to share something you want to live experience something with others so the body the communication then touching objects and moving them and these are the rules of the presence and the very good quality I'm going to have to leave it a bookmark in this conversation and by all means I invite you to continue the conversation as we are together over the next couple of days or online using hashtag folder at twitter and all those other places that are happening over here but our group in this real life room is going to head onto a trolley to again a knock way and to see and hear about a VR experiment that's happening there that's part of the Thousand Islands Playhouse Innovation Residency and we want to hear from Nick Beo and Gata Jane about what they've been working on so I want to thank you so much Vojac for sharing so much and I know you are referring to I have this vision over here that you are referring to an article I wonder if you wouldn't mind sharing a link to the article that you are referring to on our Slack channel yes it's quite old, it's two years old so it's like ancient in VR but yeah I would be happy to share it thank you so much and thanks to all of you we'll see you downstairs to hop on a trolley there's some blankets in a basket thank you