"Walk in your own shoes!" Dismantling the Promise of VR Non-Fiction and Fathoming the Potential of Dis-immersion as Critical Intervention.

Presenter: Anna Wiehl
Registration Number: 060
Institution: University of Bayreuth, Germany
Abstract: This presentation focuses on "new narratives" dealing with the global issue of migration, which, however, stands only as a paradigm of other forms of systemic injustice and discrimination. Taking paradigmatic projects—among others Clouds over Sidra (2015) and This Room (2017)—I will set off to look behind the promise of interactive, immersive narratives to let users “walk in someone else’s shoes.”
I will explore in how far the specific affordances through which the documentary experience is enabled affect the engagement with content and the potential transformative impact the producers are aiming at. Are we dealing with an exploitive gaze, a form of narcissistic spectatorship, are we drawn into a “human rights spectacle,” or do new forms of narrative enable response-able witnessing? And which role do empathy, immersion, presence, and co-presence play in this context?
The theoretical framework of the contribution brings together
- recent theories of VR non-fiction (among others Rose 2018; 2019, Nash 2018, Sutherland 2015, Bailenson 2018) which draw on the tradition of documentary theory and approaches to interactive storytelling,
- findings in neurosciences and social psychology (e.g. Bertrand et al. 2018, Schutte & Stilinović 2017, Farmer 2019), especially as to concepts of immersion, empathy and presence in VR environments,
- and sets them into relation with media-ethical considerations coming from critical theory and critical whiteness studies. The background of the presentation is the early hype around VR non-fiction as "the ultimate empathy machine" (Milk 2015). As such, it was only consistent that NGOs embrace the technology to raise awareness for their causes. However, more recent discourses question the power of VR to achieve social change—not only as the depiction of marginalized groups remains stuck in stereotypes, but especially as the regimes of gaze are accompanied by moral risks—mainly “improper distance” (Nash 2018). Through the uncritical transportation of the “I”/“eye” of the spectator, VR brings forth problematic socio-cultural, socio-political as well as media-ethical constellations: first of all, it runs the risk of dehistoricizing and depoliticizing complex issues, such as migration and race issues; also, the regimes of gaze realized in many configurations potentially reinscribing hegemonic, colonial points-of-view; foremost, however, uncritical exploitation of the affordances of VR invites the spectators to impose their truth over the actual experiences of “others,” colonizing their feelings.
These challenges in view, I suggest a form of critical estrangement and to the opportunity of new narratives to induce not primarily immersion but to oscillate between immersion and dis-immersion, blurring documentary factuality and artistic fictionality, arguing that the potential of new narratives does not consist in its amplification of visual illusion and immediate affective response but rather in its ability to model a different concept of subjectivity and inter-subjectivity altogether, questioning established regimes of gaze and perspective on the “self” in relation to others.

Bio: Anna Wiehl has been a research fellow with i-docs at the Digital Cultures Research Centre, Bristol, UK and a lecturer and research assistant at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. Her transdisciplinary research focuses on digital media cultures, documentary practices and interactive storytelling. Apart from her academic career, she has worked among others for the transmedia broadcasters ARTE and Bayerischer Rundfunk. From 2017 to 2019, Anna directed a research project on interactive documentary and finished her habilitation project The “New” Documentary Nexus. Networked|Networking in interactive assemblages. Currently, she is leading a BMBF research network on The Documentary and the Digital.

Narrative Goes the Cyber Way: The Case of "India’s Lockdown Film," C U Soon.

Presenter: Pooja Radhakrishnan

Registration Number: 018
Institution: Indian Institute of Technology Ropar, Punjab, India

Abstract: The digital era has been fruitful for Malayalam films, a regional film industry in India’s Kerala, for experimenting with new modes of storytelling. This paper explores a crucial juncture where the Covid-19 lockdown enacted in India, opens up new and innovative spatial experiments within this industry where digital technology plays a dominant role, in ways, hitherto unusual in Malayalam films. Inspired by American mystery thriller, Searching (2018), Malayalam language film, C U Soon (2020), makes use of the limited spatial conditions to shoot a film entirely on an iPhone and narrates it using a computer screen location. With C U Soon, Malayalam cinema supplies novel means of exploring the digital space, and also convincingly depicts technology as part of the Malayalee’s "everyday" (Lefebvre 2008). 

Often known for its experimental cinema, and lauded for its emphasis on realism, the industry has been not so successful in producing overblown technological fantasies liked by the ordinary Malayali. One reason being Malayalam film’s obsession with realistic locations and depicting the everyday. However, in the past few years, the industry has seen a boom of tech jargon pertaining to social networking apps and others. Text messaging, video chats and many other smartphone applications have now become part of the Malayali lifestyle on screen. By resorting to concepts in cinema studies and cultural theory such as realism, the everyday, and space, this analysis tries to understand: a) how the idea of the "ordinary," integral to Malayalam films, reflects in its recent tech genre, b) how tech films like C U Soon overcome the Malayali audience’s general dislike for anything "extra ordinary"? And c) how recent Malayalam films, and C U Soon in particular, have been able to domesticize technology as an everyday Malayali culture? 

Bio: Pooja R. is a second-year research scholar in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Ropar, Punjab, India. She is interested in the discipline of film studies with a focus on post-independence Indian popular cinema. She takes a multidisciplinary approach that encompasses the field of film sociology, history, national and global politics, and postcolonial theory. She is interested in the changing nature of spatial practices in Indian films and undertakes its socio-cultural reading. Her research topic focuses on the concept of space, fear, and the theory of the “other” in the context of cinematic geographies of post-emergency Hindi films. She holds a master’s degree from Kannur University, Kerala, in English Language and Literature.

The Forking Paths — Interactive Films: From Basic Interaction Models to Full Interactive Experience.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x82gpgb  (14‘) (password: paths)

 

Presenter: Bruno Mendes da Silva
Registration Number: 008
Institution: University of Algarve, Faro, Portugal
Abstract: Based on The Forking Paths project, this article aims to analyse the different models and levels of filmic interactivity. Through this analysis we seek indications for possible paths of evolution of the audiovisual language that, after the unavoidable contributions of authors like Griffith, Porter, Kuleshov, and Eisenstein, seems to have stagnated in time. Finally, we address the ultimate question: is there really interactivity between spectator and interactive film? The methodology used is based on "practice-based research": original research carried out in order to gain new knowledge through practice and the results of that practice (Candy, 2006; Candy & Edmonds, 2010). According to Candy, originality and contribution to knowledge can be demonstrated through creative outcomes, such as music, images or new media, that result in the cut of that research. The Centre for Research in Arts and Communication (CIAC) of the University of Algarve has been producing digital artifacts that promote the interconnection between arts and technologies, and a significant part of the products developed are the result of projects in the areas of interactive cinema (i.e. The Forking Paths [https://oscaminhosquesebifurcam.ciac.pt/en/]).
With the emergence of the film-application, the spectator has been gaining autonomy in the control and participation of the filmic narrative. However, despite the new interaction proposals being more and more technologically advanced, using sensors, virtual reality or other interfaces, the spectator is still confined to the pre-produced contents. In fact, we can only speak of true interaction when a reciprocal influence is effected in the communication process. Such interaction does not happen in any of the productions made up to the time of writing this proposal, limiting the viewers to certain insurmountable and predetermined choices. However, with the imminent possibility of the Fertile Model (a model whose process of interactivity between viewer and film enables the emergence of new contents that were not pre-defined a priori), the viewer gains creative powers that escape the control of the author, making concrete the idea of meta-author and providing a generation of unforeseen contents, the so-called contents of automatic creation. This will certainly be a break in the logical sequence of the brief history of interactive film, where film may become something it never was until now: a total interactive experience.

Bio: Bruno Mendes da Silva has a degree in Cinema and Video from School of Arts of Oporto (ESAP) (1995), and a postgraduate degree in Arts Management from Macao Institute of European Studies (IEEM) (1998). He received his PhD in Literature and Cinema in 2008 from the University of the Algarve (UALG), Portugal and his Post PhD in Interactive Cinema in 2016, also from UAlg. He is the Coordinator of Communication Sciences area at School of Education and Communication (ESEC) and the Director of the degree in Communication Sciences. He is the Vice coordinator of the Research Centre for Arts and Communication (CIAC). He was a TV Producer and Director from 1995 to 2000 at Teledifusão de Macau (TDM) and has been invited to International Art and Film Festivals such as Fresh (Thailand), Dokanema (Mozambique), Loop (Spain), Festival de la imagen (Colombia), Ecologias Digitales (Colombia), The Scrip Road Macau (China) and FILE (Brazil). He has participated in 18 scientific projects (as investigator-in-charge or research member) and is the author of several books, book chapters, and other scientific publications (over 70). It has several doctoral and master thesis orientations completed. He is the Director of the Journal Rotura -Communication Sciences and Arts. He has dedicated the last decade to the research of the relations between Communication, Art and Technology and won the Ceratonia Scientific Award.