Vondel CS: The Centre of VR
The best way to inspire a group of students that work on a Virtual Reality project is definitely to throw them in a pool of more than fifty VR demo experiences from various companies and research teams. VR is the future and the “Dutch VR Days” event hosted in Vondel CS surely was a master blaster for the audience but also for tech lovers, games and researchers as well. On Saturday the 31st, the admission was free and thus everyone could pass by Vondelpark and enter a world full of infinite possibilities. You could actually transport to different eras, countries, fly on a broomstick (not kidding), become part of Van Gogh’s Night Café but also be in the middle of a crazy artistic video clip. However, not all of the available experiences were that exciting or well-made but in a period that this domain is flourishing, the only way to form a new channel of communication is to include every fish in the sea both small and big. The event was a successful experiment because it wasn’t promoted as an Avant Garde, elitistic kind of technological symposium but it proved to be the threshold of a whole new era where people can experience multisensory journeys.
However, this blog post aims to value the best ones in terms of visual quality but also content wise. It makes sense that content in a developing entertainment field is not an absolute necessity since concretizing the basic functionalities of VR is a top priority nowadays. Understandably, there will be creators that manage to balance the gap between technological progress and storytelling possibilities. The winners of the first Dutch VR Days are by far, NFA’S “Thousand Faces “ and Revolver Amsterdam’s “Amani-360VR for Terre des Hommes”. They innovate in both storytelling ways as well as interactive strategies with the viewer in a tactile and empathetic way respectively. But let’s break it down in order to appreciate to the fullest the experiences they offered to the public.
The little protagonist of the VR experience
Amani narrates the story of young girl in Africa who is being subjected to a regime of child slavery, which entails verbal and corporeal abuse as well as sexual harassment. The short VR film aims to raise awareness about this cruel phenomenon to the Western societies but it does not negate the art of cinema. On the contrary, this film could pose as a bridge between VR and traditional cinema since it encompasses cinematic techniques that could work in virtual reality as well. For example, in the beginning of the VR experience, the viewer is shown related to child-slavery with a voice-over introducing the topic of the whole venture. After this cinematic commencement, the magical moment comes that the viewer enters into the girl’s reality by literally getting in the screen. From that point on, the viewer experiences everything around the girl’s everydayness even though VR offer a rather static subject position. However, the film stages the scenes so successfully that the headgear user feels for the girl and becomes witness of one of the darkest spots on modernity. Even though, there are no specific shots since VR offers the illusion of freedom to the users, the directors Eelko Ferwerda & Joris Weerts manage to use sound localization to direct the viewers’ attention. The viewers watch the girl’s actions and simultaneously monitor the environment around her. After reaching a shocking climax, the VR experience succeeds in making the viewer feel responsible for their ignorance and quiescence. This results in making them want to somehow contribute in any possible way to the eradication of these inhumane situations.
The Promotional Poster for the Dutch VR Days
On the other hand, Thousand Face decided to innovative more on the part of the technology and the incorporation of the senses. The basic story revolves around a spaceship exploring a new planet where a unknown source of power exists. Getting into a pitch black room with the Oculus Rift headset is a mysterious enough beginning for the experience. If you combine this with a haptic technology glove, you have the future of Virtual Reality. Being in an environment where you can interact with your surroundings but in a meaningful way so that it adds to the story, is what will define how successfully haptic technology will be combined with virtual reality. Gathering energy power from objects in the room that are digitally recreated in Virtual Reality seems like a good start to explore the infinite possibilities of modern gaming and visual technology. It is a basic start in therms of narrative but it captures the viewers mind because they actually feel useful by contributing somehow to the virtual environment they find themselves. Being a kind of an astronaut who collects intel about an unknown civilization is a workable basis with which the user can relate to since the reality he/she is in is visible and tangible.
Conclusively, there will always be Virtual Reality experiences that do not take into consideration the user’s needs or standards. As a result, they cause a sense of nausea (high speed, sudden or odd change of camera angles) to the audience but at the same do not satisfy with their non-existent or basic narratives. However, the creators that centralize the users concentrate their creativity and technical skills on fulfilling their expectations, pleasantly surprising them and challenging their notions of gaming, cinema and visual arts in general.