The Alternate Realities programme at this year’s just-concluded Sheffield DocFest is pared back, featuring a VR competition, an exhibition and summit in collaboration with the International Documentary Association (IDA). We spoked with Artistic Director Raul Niño Zambrano and co-curators Abby Sun and Keisha Knight about the vision and thoughts behind this year’s immersive experience and its spirit of collaboration.
Cover: Perinatal Dreaming. Understanding Country, by Marianne Wobcke / Big Anxiety Research Centre, Volker Kuchelmeister, Lucia Barrera
An interdisciplinary programme connected to the festival
Raul Niño Zambrano – As a creative director, I’m overseeing not only the film content, but also Alternate Realities. For [me and the team], it was very important that there were more things interconnected, to not have “that’s only my side, you cannot be here.” So, we’ve been trying to have the interdisciplinary worlds talk to each other, within the market as well. Of course, the nature is different, but you never know what kind of connections you can make.
R. N. Z. – With Alternate Realities, it has always been a thing asking how do we define it and what do we want? For us, it’s important to see it as an extension. Just as we do for films, we are not looking for one specific type or style. Our responsibility is to show the whole spectrum. We pick up what we think is really worth highlighting. And I think that’s happening also in the XR field, their possibilities are endless. You see how an installation starts as virtual reality, but then becomes an installation, or the other way around. We’re looking at the intersection of art, technology and documentary, and trying to give a message – What are all these pieces saying all together?
K. C. – For this year’s Alternate Realities programme, you are collaborating with IDA and the programme is co-curated by Keisha Knight and Abby Sun.
R. N. Z. – Yes, everything started because of Experimental Realities, a workshop they did in the USA asking a group of emerging artists about the future of immersive. When we talked, we thought it resonated a lot and was a good match.
R. N. Z. – One of the big questions was how do we see immersive media in the future? What does immersive really mean? Of course it has to do with technology and media, but what happened when we tried to distance a bit from that, we found that you come more to embodiment and to the senses and to haptic. I also felt that that was resonating with our film program; our tagline this year is Reflections on Realities.
R. N. Z. – I think more than focusing only on where artificial intelligence is going, it’s time to really immerse ourselves to the roots. For example, there’s a lot of archive in the films that we are showing, and it shows how important is to document things and to validate documents as well as the audio/visual as part of what the genre of documentary is. And when we came with this idea of embodiment, of feeling our senses, I was like ‘oh yeah, this is this is definitely part of the vibration, the frequency that we are having in the festival’. So [the different pieces] are putting balance into what they say as a whole, which is again reflecting what is happening in the field.
R. N. Z. – With sounds and touch, there is a piece NOCTURNAL FUGUE from Jiabao Li, who is also doing a keynote in our summit. It tries to understand how bats communicate with each other, and so you will walk around this cavelike space with a special headset. It’s asking questions about nature, animals, how they communicate and are we missing that communication as well? And looking at how technology can help us work to get in touch again with our senses.
R. N. Z. – So the basic question was ‘what is the meaning of immersive media’? And looking at the combination of the networks, marketing and software things that you have to respond to things, but also how senses play a big role.
K.C. – What I see in this is that you’re embracing other forms of immersive-ness, which can be physical and present, and doesn’t actually have to involve technology in any way.
R. N. Z. – But, also, we have to talk about it. There’s a session in the summit [about using AI in non-fiction practices], we also have films that talk about it, but it’s not the main thing. The response needs to be about everything.
R. N. Z. – It was easy to have [the future of immersive] as a starting point. We made a choice to have only five pieces in the big exhibition. We wanted more quality than quantity; it’s important this year because you really have to spend the time and we wanted to bring to the pieces the attention they deserve. So we have that exhibition and then in the studio we have a virtual reality competition with only headset pieces.
K.C. – Is the separation between the competition and the exhibition just a difference between larger format, physically immersive pieces and those more VR based?
R. N. Z. – For the purely VR, we wanted to give them a space. Especially with XR, it has been complicated to compare things, especially when you make a competition. It’s of course possible, but I don’t think it’s fair to put things like that. So we said okay, the value of being in the exhibition is that it’s big and it’s more of a context thing, but because we get also so many entries from VR, we thought let’s give them a space and then we can compare them together and make a competition.
K. C. – You also have several non-traditional presentations, more like group experiences.
R. N. Z. – That’s also me pushing the things that we need to interconnect. So for TRACES OF RESPONSIBILITY [which invites the audience to collectively navigate a pathway through the complex origins and aftermath of the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda], we put it in a cinema. It’s actually more of a cinema experience, but you follow it with your telephone, and you can, together with the group, transform the narrative of what you are about to see. We got very excited because it’s this pure combination: is it a film or is it an AR piece? And it’s actually both –you have to go to the cinema, where you will see other people going to linear films. It really fits into us wanting to merge more. For DISTANT FEELER, we wanted a piece to round up the summit as a way to talk about the big discussions that we think are relevant at the moment – it’s a performance with projection, but they have to do it in a cinema.
K. C. – The summit and its talks are also focused where immersive is going in the future? It ranges from incorporating AI to intersections of technology and humanity to decolonizing technologies.
R. N. Z. – Yes, it touches on different themes around the same basic question. But we have our prototypes too. There will be a session in which people will just show their prototypes – this is also back to the senses, showing something that’s vulnerable, getting feedback. We have a conversation about artificial intelligence, Jiabao Li will talk about her work and how she thinks about immersive media in the future. One of the things that came out of IDA’s experimental realities workshop was to create the Institute of Decolonial Technologies, so [Abby and Keisha] will talk more about that as well. Thinking 40 or 50 years ahead, what we will need to know? We need policies, we need an institute, we need things already in place to work on that. So it will be touching on many different things. But I think “embodiment” will be a good keyword for the whole thing as well.
K. C. – As the artistic director overseeing everything, are you seeing synergies in terms of emerging topics across the different sections?
R. N. Z. – Something that I was forecasting, but that I’m happy to see come through, not only linear films but also in XR is indigenous voices being really more out there. You are seeing indigenous filmmakers and artists using technology, using film, documenting things but in a wonderful, beautiful way where the narrative doesn’t need to follow a style. Also sound is becoming extremely important. I find that very enriching. We’re starting to get to listen and see all these stories we have not seen or heard yet. It’s nothing extremely new, but I see it more and more, and now it’s spreading across different disciplines.
K. C. – We’re decolonizing the content and the form I think.
R. N. Z. – Exactly. For me, it always gives me that space to think, ‘wow, all the stories we haven’t heard yet, that were really silenced, that they didn’t have even the opportunity’. And now, through archives and through technology, we are rediscovering and revisiting.
About the Alternate Realities Exhibition + Summit
K. C. – Can you talk about the exhibit and the summit and how the questions you asked in the Experimental Realities workshop informed this?
Abby Sun – The exhibit – how its structured, how we went about it and what pieces were selected – all stemmed from an urge to intervene in some of the practices and other exhibits that we’ve attended in the past and other documentary XR spaces at documentary film festivals. It started with the Experimental Realities convening, which really had a central question which is whether or not documentary new technologies and immersive pieces can ever be truly documentary and or art beyond the technology of it. Because I think, until a couple of years ago, a lot of what was was being showcased and what was being funded was all coming from either hardware – headset manufacturers – or game engine companies. So a lot of it centered on what could be done as opposed to the concepts and the ideas themselves.
Keisha Knight – For the theme of the exhibit, we really wanted to focus on embodiment and grounding in experience. [The gallery] is almost just like an atmosphere. The pieces are cited in this very welcoming, cozy atmosphere very different from those kinds of hard surfaces of a museum or even a regular exhibit exhibition space for VR.
A. S. – Another thing that I find really frustrating about showcases is that you have to sign up for times and then people don’t show up and there’s a long wait time. If you’re not the one doing the experience, all you’re seeing is other people doing it, and it looks like it’s just a Demo Expo Hall with products and toys, and it’s not actually an artistic installation. So here, if you’re not the one that’s actually participating, there’s a way to still experience part of it.
K. K. – And so I think that’s really the spirit we wanted to bring into the space as well, in terms of, yeah, just thinking about selling this is, again, moving on to the summit. I mean, this is what we’re going to be thinking about on Sunday, like really thinking about what kind of like, you know, thought models, what kind of, you know, new ways of interacting and relation and different types of ways of like negotiating reality do we need to manifest in order to really create the world that we want to be a part of in the future.
A. S. – [The Alternate Realities Summit] starts with what you would expect with opening remarks and a signature talk. And then every successive event become less and less adhering to the traditional format of conference panels and talks. For example, the second session on working with AI and documentary is not a typical funders panel. We’ve invited two makers, Deniz Tortum from SHADOWTIME and Bálint Révész, a Hungarian maker who’s working on a confidential contract with AI. They will be the interlocutors asking the gatekeepers questions, as opposed to it being ‘this is how you get funding for AI projects’.
A. S. – Our prototype panel and prototype presentations are not a pitch for funding but is really intended to be a discussion, a showcase of the range of types of projects that can be in the immersive space. There’s apps, there’s interactive, there’s headset VR, there’s one project that’s in development and they actually have development money to even figure out what the format it. There’s another project that is done and they’re raising funds for impact right now.
K. K. – One of the things, at least in my circulating in these different VR pitch spaces, is there’s the sense that I’m not sure that that model is actually most useful for these works. Because they’re so different, it’s kind of impossible to bring all the different types of support that they need into one place. It’s not necessarily just financial. What we’re hoping is that these moments of being able to play with the prototypes and interact will allow people to form different relationships. There’s a feeling that people work very much in silos in this world, so it’s also about trying to bring people together as makers…funders…programmers.
A. S. – And then the evening ends with a performance, DISTANT FEELER, on telepathic cinema, using an archaic a form of projection and narration. Which for me is also key because it’s really important to decouple immersive from virtual, and immersive from digital.
K. K. – Going back to the exhibit, we wanted a sonic experience. So we found this artist Muna McCadie who does sound baths with gongs and glass bowls. She worked with a hiking group of people of color in Sheffield, so they each went to their different green spaces in Sheffield and recorded what they saw and what they felt and what they heard. And then Muna did gong soundscaping, and then it was all edited together. And so you have these little vignettes of different green spaces in Sheffield that play three times a day during the exhibit.
A. S. – And while the sound piece is playing all of the other pieces are paused. And there is a practical reason too because it gives the laptops a chance to cool off. You know, in a normal exhibit, you would just be told, sorry, it’s closed right, you can’t do it. But instead, we’ve considered it for the experience. We built it in so it was something that is organic and natural and doesn’t leave people feeling like they’re excluded from doing something because of misfortunate timing.
K. K. – The summit is being opened by Jibao Li on the intersection of technology and humanity. Can you talk about her piece NOCTURNAL FUGUE?
A. S. – It’s a multi-part piece, a collaboration between Jibao and Matt McCorkle, who creates wearables. The way she talks about it is that it’s about interspecies collaboration, and non-human species collaboration. We were very interested in doing something with haptics because it’s a really unexplored space. Users have sticks attached to a couch to vibrate it in tune to the bat vocalizations that are in the video that is projected in front of the couch, on a loop. Then the bat masks are a really unique form of augmented reality, where any of the sounds that are issued from around the wearer of the mask, will show as a visualization of what echo location looks like from a bat point of view. You can take the masks out – they are on hangers in the gallery – so people can walk around the entire space and “fly around like bats”.
K. K. – What’s really cool about this exhibition is that it continues for three weeks afterwards, so it’s really beautiful for the community.
In addition to the programme, Sheffield DocFest’s Industry’s Alternate Realities Talent Scheme brought together a selection of 8 UK artists working with immersive media, VR and XR.
https://www.sheffdocfest.com/alternate-realities-programme-2024
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