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‘Dinner Party’ relives an interracial couple’s alien abduction in VR
On the night of September 19th, 1961, Barney and Betty Hill were the victims of the first widely publicized alien abduction in US history. The Hills, an interracial couple active in the civil-rights movement, were on their way home from a trip to Niagara Falls when they noticed an unusual light in the sky. Shaken by the erratic behavior of the UFO, they headed in the direction of the closest town but never made it.
'Star Wars' and the coming holographic cinema revolution
"AR is going to hit us like a big bang," says ILMxLab creative director John Gaeta when I ask him whether augmented reality, as that holographic technology is known, has been undervalued by the public and press. "We're just trying to point out right from the beginning that there will be a form of AR that will be as hi-fidelity as the cinema that you see at some point. I can't say what year that'll be. But at some point, we'll have intimate holo-experiences with performance and things like that."
The future of entertainment's taking shape on a flying whale
When Alex McDowell tells me he's considering using virtual reality as "a new kind of literacy," as a way to educate using real science, it's clear that I'm dealing with a visionary. We're sitting beside The Leviathan Project, his "research project" that's taking temporary residence at the Sundance Film Festival's New Frontier exhibit, and dissecting the shifting parameters that define this brave new media world. McDowell's a film industry veteran who's worked on production design with the bold-faced names that've directed some of cinema's most unforgettable blockbusters. From the likes of David Fincher with Fight Club to Terry Gilliam with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Steven Spielberg's Minority Report, McDowell's had a hand in guiding our imagination and steering our conception of the future for several decades.
The VR arcade of the future will look something like this
I knew I was on solid ground. I knew that no matter if I misstepped, I wouldn't fall hundreds of feet, plummeting to my death in some CG-Egyptian ruin. And yet, I was shaky, desperately reaching out for a handhold to steady myself, unable to calmly place one foot in front of the other as I attempted to cross a chasm bridged by a collection of meager wooden beams.
Sundance's experimental New Frontier looks beyond virtual reality
Virtual reality found itself front and center of Utah's wintery celebrity village earlier this year, virtually dominating the conversation around this past Sundance Film Festival. The technology, a burgeoning new medium for artists, game developers, filmmakers, and journalists alike, had reached a cultural tipping point, with the Park City fest playing host to the announcement of a dedicated VR animation studio from Facebook-owned Oculus VR and ten VR projects that stole the headlines from Sundance's edgy, experimental New Frontier showcase."Last year was one of those historic moments where it was like the perfect storm," says Shari Frilot, chief curator of New Frontier's VR-heavy 2015 showcase. "Not only were there significant developments in the technology and a commitment by storytellers, content creators, filmmakers and journalists to grasp onto it, [but] there was also this ramping up of industry -- manufacturing, as well as kind of peaking of interest in more mainstream content creators. That all converged at the festival in a way that was really explosive. ... That's sort of the unicorn that came out of New Frontier."
The Godmother of Virtual Reality: Nonny de la Peña
"Print stuff didn't scratch the itch. Documentary didn't scratch the itch. TV drama didn't scratch the itch. It wasn't until I started building this stuff. There was no way I could do anything else. I just couldn't do anything else. I don't know even how to explain that. And I think sometimes I wanna shoot myself in the head that I can't do anything else because it just motivates me. [VR] drives me. This is such a visceral empathy generator. It can make people feel in a way that nothing, no other platform I've ever worked in can successfully do in this way." Let that stand as your introduction to Nonny de la Peña, the woman pioneering a new form of journalism that aims to place viewers within news stories via virtual reality. That vision has culminated in Emblematic Group, her content- and VR hardware-focused company that she runs along with her brother in Los Angeles.
How a queer black filmmaker made virtual reality a reality at Sundance
When Shari Frilot first kicked off New Frontier, an exhibit that pushes the boundaries of traditional storytelling through art and technology, at the Sundance Film Festival back in 2007, the attending press didn't quite know what to make of it or the works on display. "People came and they had no idea what we were doing, but they thought it was really cool," says Frilot of that inaugural exhibit. "And people were calling it 'art at Sundance.' So we had to fight that in the press. We're decidedly not doing an art show."
