Caspar Sonnen kicked off the IDFA DocLab R&D Summit last month with a wonderful quote from Donna Haraway: “Our task is to make trouble, to stir up potent response to devastating events, as well as to settle troubled waters and rebuild quiet places.” This year has been about opening up post-pandemic but things are far from ‘back to normal’ and I know this has been a hard, weird, surreal, exciting, terrifying, complicated year for many of us. Things are very up and down in our immersive community. We may be (mostly) comfortable working in liminal spaces without clear definitions and reveling in our undisciplined disciplines but we still need funding, support, and strategy and these things are often in short supply. I hope you are all holding up and feeling positive about what comes next. We wish you all a wonderful festive season. See you in 2023!
Here’s the latest in Immerse:
“Where do you begin telling someone that their world is not the only one?” Learn more about the Worlding Workshop that took place a few months ago exploring Climate Futures, Land Use Planning, Co-creation, Real Time 3D Game Engines (RT3D) and Documentary Storytelling.
Read the executive summary for the Creating Community in Hybrid Festivals report. You can also download the full report.
Revealing Reality in Imaginary Worlds is a three-part series by Sarah Wolozin on how storytellers are using VR to create imaginary worlds where participants must uncover the truth. Read part 1 and part 2 now.
Augmenting Reality — Or distracting from it? Lessons for documentary storytellers from the Minnesota Twins’ New Experiment with AR.
What we’re reading and watching
IDFA DocLab Founder Caspar Sonnen talks to Kent Bye about the 2022 program, industry trends, and distribution challenges. There’s lots more coverage of IDFA DocLab on Voices of VR.
ChatGPT is a code red for Google’s search business.
While we’re on the subject, can ChatGPT make a podcast?
‘What if Wes Anderson directed Star Wars’ is a great prompt, but it highlights how far AI goes in stealing styles. Many of us are unpacking AI art’s ethical issues at the moment.
‘Extinction is on the table’: Jaron Lanier warns of tech’s existential threat to humanity.
The New York Times R&D team on exploring design patterns for creating mixed reality stories.
What is ‘reality priviledge’?
Hidden Door wants to be able to turn any work of fiction into an immersive collaborative roleplaying experience.
Why the world needs more 3D designers.
We used to get excited about technology. What happened?
Dig into the Nieman Lab predictions for journalism in 2023, including one from Immerse’s Jessica Clark.
Inside Molly White’s campaign against crypto. You might also be interested in this conversation with Molly on the Tech Won’t Save Us podcast about the implosion of FTX and Alameda Research, and what happens next with Sam Bankman-Fried.
Projects we’re eyeballing
He Fucked The Girl Out of Me by Taylor McCue won the IDFA DocLab award for digital storytelling and is available to play online. It has some very upsetting content but you can get trigger warnings in-game and it is a powerful experience to go through.
His Name is My Name recently won a special jury award for creative technology at IDFA DocLab. The project, created by Eline Jongsma and Kel O’Neil, is a personal story about family secrets and the legacy of WWII. You can experience it now on Instagram.
What happens when museums can no longer show their collections and instead need to hide them? What does it mean to be a street artist when your city is being bombed? What does it take to be a musician when your country is under attack? You Destroy. We Create, created by by NowHere Media’s Gayatri Parameswaran and Felix Gaedtke, tells the story of the war on Ukraine’s culture.
The Infinite Conversation is a an AI generated, never-ending discussion between Werner Herzog and Slavoj Žižek. You’re welcome.
Before the Bulldozers is an immersive audio tour of Southwest D.C. If you can’t make it to Washington you can watch an immersive 360 version of the walk.
Coming up
Submission deadlines
Plexus Projects is accepting applications for the Virtual Virtual (remote) Residency for artists creating extended reality artworks with technologies including but not limited to VR, AR, and XR media. Deadline to apply December 30.
Tribeca Immersive extended deadline is January 18.
Immerse is an initiative of MIT Open DocLab and Dot Connector Studio, and receives funding from Just Films | Ford Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation. The Gotham Film & Media Institute is our fiscal sponsor. Learn more about Immerse here. We are committed to exploring and showcasing emerging nonfiction projects that push the boundaries of media and tackle issues of social justice — and rely on friends like you to sustain ourselves and grow. Join us by making a gift today.
Publisher: Jessica Clark (Dot Connector Studio)
Managing Editor: Julie Fukunaga
Editorial Collective: Sarah Wolozin (MIT Open DocLab), Ingrid Kopp (Electric South), Kat Cizek (MIT Open DocLab)