VR Live Performance
After experiencing Elastic Time, the first VR piece produced by Imverse, Maria Guta, a Romano-Swiss art wanted to make a unique experience based on Imverse live volumetric capture technology. She imagined an experience called INTERLOOPED, revolving around the self image at the age of digital platforms and social media in a powerful and fun way. The experience was selected to premiere at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival (in the new frontier section). See the trailer:
This VR experience is really a one of a kind art masterpiece, where the participant starts by seeing his own body in natural first-person perspective, then seeing multiple versions of the virtual personas of Maria Guta, until she enters in real in the room with the participant, offering a very powerful interaction with the participants who weren’t quite sure if she was real of virtual until entering in physical contact. This powerful experience then leads to out of body experiences and a sequence of games offering new perspective on one’s own image and behaviors. The experience was overall very well received and made another showcase at the GIFF – Geneva International Film Festival – in the summer of the same year. See some reactions from participants at Sundance:
Swissnex San Francisco was one of the main supporters of the experience and made a coverage of the arttech collaboration between Maria Guta and Imverse during the experience showcase at Sundance, in Park City, Utah, USA
As for my participation I was especially involved in the shooting during production when we were volumetrically recording the performances of of Maria Guta to be integrated within the experience. Another big input from my side was in the promotion of the experience, the teasers, trailers, and other audiovisual materials. During the showcase of the experience my role was even more important, onboarding the participants at the beginning of the experience when entering the room, preparing them with the right mindset and participation level to create an experience as powerful as possible. While the participants where going through the experience I was making sure they would also remain in the main area of the experience and not hit any wall.
Here is a little video interview talking I had at Sundance with Kevin Kunze, who has a YouTube channel about immersive media:
