Immersive Essays

Next session 07.11.2019

Homework: present something you found online for 5 min. (Meme/Person/Story/Style)
Mainly picture presentation!

+ collect inspiration for essay theme ; presentation methods in VR /Immersive digital space

+ look at GMU wiki

Sound that supports actions
>e.g. walking; going through something; getting close to something or walking through it e.g. in Zelda when Link walks through the bushes there is always a sound

+ I like the added motion design when a user is e.g. dropped into a scene

Guidance that allows user to feel 'safe' and know what to do
> e.g. text with instructions

What kind of aesthetics work best in digital?
Super glossy, HD ?

Already now it might be a good idea to remind myself to aim for a more pure and simple idea and focus on the execution ? It feels like the more reduced the visual is the purer the concept is presented e.g. Dear my Tilted floor

Useful advice gathered from previous student's project reports

the DBL platform is limited to 5x5 meter

when using photogrammetry models the scene takes very long to load

using pre-made models allows for a smoother user experience

you set triggers that move users from one scene to another - surfaces seem to work well for this.

Might be interesting to draw forms and textures in Blender.

Conclusion: Maybe I should save the Photogrammetry experimentations for 'Weird Worlds' since it's exclusively for that and focus more on the construction of virtual space with pre-built assets that can be modified and found footage.

Ed Atkins e.g. also focuses on creating models in sometimes scenes that seem somehow unfinished but the aesthetic still works and it feels intentionally conceptual

* send e-mail that I will miss next session due to excursion

Possible presentation topics:

Nico

Club Kids/Micheal Alig

Michelle Lamy

Graces by Jun Takahashi

Fka Twigs (street style)

The Space Lady !

What do you need for a VR experience to work and feel immersive?

I really like how Ana Roxanne's 'In a Small Valley' creates the same effect of found sound bits turning into a visual story that paint a mental picture

Look into how virtual space is beginning to be understood as a 'space' that can be used as a parallel dimension to our physical world. Through crypto digital 'objects' can be unique, verified, limited edition articles ( e.g. crypto kitties)

Also events taking place only digitally (e.g. Concert happening in multiplayer game)

CONTEXTUALISE
virtual environment into virtual space developments

Presentation for 8th:

Jun Takahashi is a Japanese fashion designer for a brand called UNDERCOVER, which IS KNOWN AS THE PIONEER TO BRIDGE HIGH END FASHION AND STREET WEAR TOGETHER. ( type of brand that does collaborations with Nike and converse . interesting contrast to the GRACES)

Doll-making is an avid hobby of Takahashi's for many years. They appeared prominently for the first time in the Spring 09 collection of his label.

Their presentation was further brought to life through photos taken by Katsuhide Morimoto for the Spring 09 collection.

Entrancing ambiguity because it remains unclear if the Graces are peaceful or hostile beings.

Half dog, half-alien fuzzy beings made up of teddy bears.

Sometimes Jun Takahashi does live: presentations of the doll-making ( performance art).

And the Graces where exhibited in stores and galleries around the world (Mostly Japan and China)

For instance;
Grace and her child Graphie both continue to live on as the brand launched accompanying Holygrace and Holygraphie perfumes. At the Parisian store L'Eclaireur.

Connects; Fashion, storytelling through photograhy and instillation art / doll-making as well as performance art/ live doll-making.

Possible presentation topics:

What is a Video essay?

Audiovisual content with voice commentary (often about movies and TV shows, as these offer a lot of audiovisual footage and room for personal commentary)

Insightful + entertaining + critical + concise

A search to find out what one thinks about something
> the same approach of a written essay, pulling in references to find and make a point

Criteria it should have:

1) words, spoken, subtitled or intertitled
2) eloquent /well written/visualised/though-out/reasoned ergo making a point
3)offer single perspective - meaning not simply contrasting opposing ideas without showing a perspective
4) PERSONAL point of view - subjective - not explaining ( personal introspection )

uses audiovisual elements
news articles, pictures, movie-clips, interviews, music, video

"The more thinking on a subject that can be discerned in a video they more it can quality as a video essay."

It conveys personal thoughts and ideas on a certain topic by drawing from a myriad of information resources.

THE APPROACH:

Create a THESIS STATEMENT

Answer a question / advance an argument

/ Use audiovisual materials to elevate an argument

RESEARCH

PERSONAL perspective

VISUALISED

//
JUN TAKAHASHI CREATED UNDERCOVER IN 1991 WHEN HE WAS STUDYING AT BUNKA ACADEMY OF FASHION IN TOKYO. HE OPENED HIS FIRST STORE IN 1993 AND PRESENTED HIS FIRST RUNWAY SHOW IN PARIS A YEAR AFTER. JUN IS KNOWN AS THE PIONEER TO BRIDGE HIGH END FASHION AND STREET WEAR TOGETHER. MENTORED BY COMME DES GARCONS' DESIGNER REI KAWAKUBO, JUN USES "LESS IS MORE" PHILOSOPHY AND AVANT-GARDE APPROACH ON DESIGNING.

Part instillation art, exhibition, Fashion show and performing art, Takahashi creates a whole narrative. That has continued since its inception in 2009.

Recently in 2016 a fragrance was released for the launch for which he once again created life size dolls of HOLYGRACE AND HOLYGRAPIE , who are the two central characters in the saga, the loose plot line of which shows the creatures venturing across baren landscapes and interacting with humans - now they have created an offspring - who’s essence was the basis for the UNDERCOVER fragrance.

Working with Unity 2018.4.11f1

Jodeling walmart boy - virality through music

Bageling
Asian people have avatars to be different -
trained to be normal but you want to recognised but we don't know how to show the the special things

Olong - french artists who does body modifications as a performance - gets a lot of morphine and reads a manuscript

maybe it's interesting to research how people understand jokes ? / Why do some respond to memes?

Skybox 360 is a space around you that you can't touch - used for landscape

360° film - you can make your own input for the skybox

adobe cloud - generate 360° videos
after effect 360 collage

in principle we can also use a sphere and flip the normals instead of a skybox

Try out a 6 sided skybox

could move towards e.g. voices that are placed in the space.

Next weeks class will not take place but the week after we should have something in Unity that we can try with VR glasses.

360 pictures as skybox
360 videos

Make simple scenes - like an extraverted style of theatre.

A room of small and big objects

This space seems so majestic and unattainable to me - like being inside of a void or the eye of a tornado - where everything is still and nothing else exists. This is the type of space I'm drawn to when thinking of VR space because; because VR opens up the possibility for such impossible spaces I think it should be used for them!

Can I have a video play on a surface/object/model?

Each hemisphere could stand for something else - with the 6 sided Skybox the user is confronted with flat plains instead of an endless hemisphere. ( highlighting the digital - ruining the simulation illusion)

> what size do images have to be to fit the plane of the skybox ?

Player/viewer: You are standing on a circular plane wadding through black water. In the middle floats an ear with a flower growing out of it. When you touch it, it bobs in the water.

Around: on level of a skybox that shows the beautiful - lushes sky of heaven and the level down - that you drop into if you walk too far is hell.

Inspirational for the building in VR/ inside Unity: to use models in a similar way as Tim Walker does for instillations.

Garden of Earthly Delights; a threshold between reality and fantasy, utopia and dystopia, harmony and chaos

I'm finding it important for me when working with this program to immediately find my own style. Like not using the 'Prefab' computer-aesthetic but creating an artistic own aesthetic.
This is a good example of what I mean; I know now to create a skybox with a particular style adopted from the jpeg loaded in - but how could I get this same aesthetic style onto the model?

* Add sound - into the bubbles?
* have knife fly in at you * make sound like an arrow
* blackberries shooting out of the angel trumpets

_ Audio and animation are fairly easy and add a lot.

_ would like to create a more endless space

VR station password

let.the.left.one.in

F2 switch to Windows

OBS studio - screen recording of the VR experience

1st) TPcast

2nd) Steam store VR because they have code that works well with the VR glasses

3) open the right Unity version

Exchange the FBS controller for the Steam VR cam - from Unity asset store

steam VR > assets > prefabs > camera rig > replace on same position as FPS controller
deactivate Fbs controller
> say yes yes yes

Floating heads in black space
- might have similar effect to floating molecule orbs in black space.

A lot of people who use VR are drawn toward surrealist landscaping because this medium opens up place for dreamscapes.

I like creating an experience where there is not much to do because it's difficult to know what to do inside VR and most people are already uncertain.

Here instillation situation using the timeline and having it just unfold around you.