Sydney Blog Post 9

 

Understanding how to immerse an audience with your narrative is something that I think is important whether you’re creating a fictional or non-fiction piece. Being able to use technology to impact your ability to story-tell is something that has been increasingly more accessible in the past decades as consumer technology becomes more common and programs are written and publicized for the specific purpose of narrative telling. Clouds Over Sidra was very unique in it’s 360 degree perspective which really made you feel like you were an active participant in the landscape versus being simply a viewer/listener. I personally find that technology like Google Earth can be utilized in ways that are simply amazing. AR experiences like what we saw with “This is not a good sign” are one way to really make participating even easier—Having something you can place into reality in different contexts means that the ability to tell stories, even with a static image, has so many possibilities.

Bashir’s Dream was also of interest to me because it was in a way a more traditional narrative story-telling experience whilst also including aspects of the technology mentioned earlier. Websites like YouTube where you can publish such works are also very useful in sharing your stories. I personally agree with Chris Milk’s explanation of virtual reality story-telling as being an “empathy machine”. The age old saying describes the act of empathizing with someone as putting yourself in their shoes. What is more empathetic than to actually, physically have your story be told in first person perspective. Aside from that, even the capabilities of VR and computer imaging in general allow for freedom of expression in ways that are simply not possible in reality.

Ultimately, as we’ve discussed previously, there are so many different ways to explore the world around you and the sampling we’ve been provided with has really given me insight into the way that others see the world around them—something I may not have even considered can become an immersive, world-building project in just a matter of minutes. It’s amazing and makes me want to explore these modalities more than ever.