from Nic Millington at Rural Media
I recently saw a demonstration of this extraordinary technology at the Culture 2.0 conference in Warsaw. Brussels based performance group CREW have teamed up with the University of Hasselt to create a ground breaking fully immersive medium. By donning video goggles and headphones and strapping a laptop onto their backs the user experiences a 360 degree film allowing him / her to observe an entire virtual world around them. This virtual space enables the user not only to observe reality but to participate in it, moving around, talking and teleporting themselves into new locations. In the example that I saw users were physically in an old communist communications centre in Warsaw but entirely experiencing walking down a busy modern street in Brussels!
The applications for this technology are also rapidly expanding, ranging from CREW’s immersive performances resulting in new approaches to theatre writing, in which narration is transmitted as much by sound, image and sensations as it is by words, through to therapeutic work with people coping with mental ill health. Here is what one of CREW’s founders, Eric Joris, says:
The dream of dwelling in each other’s bodies and thoughts is as old as the human brain. For me it started with drawing while I moved within a three dimensional picture. Later, I even caressed the pixels, physically. Now, with CREW, we step into each other’s bodies, move, breath, act within them. Could we also swap identities? Can we mediate intimacy? Will theatre allow us to dwell in this amoral zone?
Check out CREW at www.crewonline.org <http://www.crewonline.org>
