The CPH:LAB is a talent development programme that helps artists and visionaries challenge themselves with new technologies and bring new perspectives to the world. We discussed the nine projects selected for this 2022-2023 edition with their creators and in this first part of our article we will present the first three of them.
In a difficult time for technology, seeing the prototypes developed during the 2022-2023 edition of the CPH:DOX Lab was refreshing and instilled hope.
Mark Atkin, curator of the CPH:DOX Inter:Active section and Head of Study of the CPH:DOX Lab (here’s XRMust’s interview) has always emphasised the need for creativity to precede innovation, and what I noticed during my few days at CPH:DOX 2023 is that sometimes you don’t need cutting-edge technology to create something that is ‘cutting-edge content’. You just need to learn how to use what you have in new ways and exploit its full potential.
It is not surprising to recognise that a fresh eye, someone who is new to these kinds of productions, or someone who is perhaps approaching them from a slightly more unusual point of view (as a means of education, or knowledge, as a way of creating a community, or even defending one) can be surprisingly good at filling them with creativity and using the apparent limitations to their advantage, rather than addressing them as disadvantages.
Discovering the CPH:LAB 2022-2023
For the above reasons not only was I very curious, this year, to experience the Inter:Active lineup of the Copenhagen festival. I also wanted to discover more about the 9 projects selected for the CPH:LAB 2022-2023.
CPH:LAB is CPH:DOX’s talent development programme that encourages creative risk taking, celebrates raw talent, facilitates collaboration across borders and business sectors and supports visionaries to push the existing boundaries of documentary filmmaking
– From CPH:DOX official website (cphdox.dk/lab)
The LAB is definitely a place where creative and visionary talents working on documentaries can go beyond their comfort zone and experiment with technology and storytelling in completely new ways. All this while meeting experts in the field and colleagues who will inevitably influence what they’re creating during the LAB.
I was able to learn more about these projects during the annual Symposium organized by CPH:DOX, a Symposium that each year touches some of the topics emerged in the parallel interactive section of the festival.
In this edition the discussion centered on the openness of metaverse (and I do recommend, as interesting read, the research by the Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies), the role of game engines in art and the future art ecosystem, the convergence of the physical and digital worlds, the social bias in AI (and boy, are they not few).
Because of their connection to all these themes, the projects were presented in conjunction with the individual panels, and it was exciting to see how their artists differ, how their prototypes spread in different directions, and at the same time how all these people are united by a common enthusiasm and desire to create something that is not ‘just’ artistic, but is first and foremost an attempt to make life a little better for everyone.
Here, then, is a small summary of what I found out about these experiences, how the Lab influenced their development and what is needed now to bring the work to fruition. We want to share this with you, because the world needs creativity, knowledge and a different perspective and we definitely saw all of this in Copenhagen.
ZEDNA by Mikisoq Hove Lynge, Wiebe van der Vliet, David Adler (Greenland, Denmark, Netherlands / 2023)
“Zedna” is a feature VR documentary film, an investigation of the process of decolonization and of broken identities. An experience and relevant voice in the ongoing debate on colonialism.
AGNESE – Why Zedna?
MIKISOQ HOVE LYNGE – Zedna is a VR experience that stems from my life and experience of being both Greenlandic and Danish. Both my parents are Greenlandic but my mom was adopted by a danish couple as an infant. I have always struggled with this being stuck between different countries, always jumping between identities, cultures and languages, and I’ve never really fit in anywhere, never been at ease. Recently, I had some personal struggles, and I realized I needed to work on myself, and this film was the next step for me, a way of asking myself “Where do I come from”, and my life transitioned into it. But it is not just me, nor could I have done it alone. After all, there is something universal about this dichotomous struggle: maybe you are not between two countries, but you might be similar struggles because of your age or gender. However, it is also true that this piece specifically addresses those who experience transnational identity, which is a difficult situation to deal with, especially if you are a teenager.
A. – What do you see in the future of this piece?
M. H. L. – My dream is to travel around the Arctic with headsets and show this work to young people in remote places, hoping they will be inspired by it. I don’t think we can go back to the traditional ways of life of the indigenous people, but neither can we just be western people. We have to find an intermediate identity, and this idea is deeply connected to the way we shot this film.
A. – Why did you choose VR to tell your story?
M. H. L. – Initially because we were intrigued by it. We wanted to try something new and we liked the way immersive stories could be told in this medium. At first we also considered volumetric capture, but as the projects evolved, it became clear to us that we needed something different. We decided to merge two 180-degree videos into a 360-degree one, both because it was closer to a classic way of shooting documentaries and because it better conveyed the idea of being stuck between two worlds. It allows people to experience what it means to be on that line, on that edge, and not be able to take a step towards one world or the other.
The idea of this double 180 turned into a 360 also makes the experience more accessible, which is something to consider when you remember that not only in the Arctic do we not have headphones. In remote areas we barely have internet and certainly not cables. We still have to work with the wireless satellite system.
UNSTABLE EVIDENCE by Francesca Panetta, Halsey Burgund, Magnus Bjerg, Shehani Fernando (United Kingdom, Denmark, United States/ 2023)
“You’ve gone viral in a social media video; but it’s not “you”, rather a digital version that looks and sounds just like you making statements you would never say.”
A. – What is your project about?
SHEHANI FERNANDO – The project is currently called Unstable Evidence and is a project exploring AI technology and the data we’re willing to share.
The piece is a one to one installation (aimed at museums and gallery settings) where you have a conversation with a digital human on screen. They explore your values, likes and dislikes. Think of it almost like a coaching or therapy session. At the end of the conversation, it tells you that it’s made a video for you. The video has used information from the conversation but manipulated it. Should you have been so quick to share so much personal information? You can choose to delete this video or share it as part of the project. The next zone you enter is a public facing exhibition about AI and the role it’s playing today – both for creative purposes but also as a tool to create misinformation. We’ll see examples of this, demystify the processes behind some of these technologies and also exhibit examples of how it’s being used – including your video if you’ve consented to share it.
FRANCESCA PANETTA – In terms of distribution, we are thinking of something similar to what we did for In Event of Moon Disaster, which we shared at festivals, museum residencies, an online platform and a social media feed. It was even turned into a teaching module. The aim is to reach as many people as possible in different contexts and create some debate around the topic.
A. – Is this kind of technology, today, mostly good or mostly bad?
S. F. – The technology is out there and we cannot stop it, although we can try to legislate to some extent. There are certainly creative uses and remarkable applications, like – artistically speaking – in film editing or dubbing in numerous languages.
F. P. – There are also medical uses: Voice cloning can be used to create synthetic voices for people who do not already have them or for people who have lost their voice due to illness. Here at CPH:DOX’s Inter:Active exhibition there is a great piece on deepfakes and drag queens (a/n Zizi & Me by Me The Drag Queen and Jake Elwes). Synthetic media show incredible possibilities but also potential problems.
S. F. – It reminds me of Photoshop: in the beginning you couldn’t tell what was photoshopped and what wasn’t. Today, sometimes you still can’t tell, but you are more likely to think it’s a possibility and then decide what to do with it. There is a kind of literacy about the possible sources of these manipulations, a media awareness that is less visible in countries where there is less rigorous journalism or free press. We really need to be more aware of what we choose to share online in terms of images and videos of ourselves and our children.
A. – Did CPH:LAB influence the development of the project?
F. P. – The first week, after the initial feedback, we definitely changed what we were going to do. The Lab was particularly helpful in iterating the path and the storyboard. It’s great to have a group of people supporting each other and a mentor to spur you on.. And I have to say that it was also helpful to have a deadline.
A. – What is the team now looking for?
S. F. – Primarily we’re looking for R&D funding and AI developers to work with on the project, but longer term we’re keen to talk to spaces that would exhibit and support the piece.
SLIPSTREAMING by Barbara Matijevic, Giuseppe Chico (Croatia, Italy, 2023)
A huge, high-tech cruise ship is floating in international waters. On board, a community experimenting with new forms of social, political, and legal systems. What could possibly go wrong?
A. – How was Slipstreaming born?
BARBARA MATIJEVIC – Slipstreaming is a 3D comedy web series with interactions and is built within a game engine. The first thing to say is that this is all completely new to us. We both come from theatre and have our own theatre company in Paris, Premier Stratageme. Our work deals with digital culture and what we have done so far is to take different digital phenomena and see how they affect people in their daily lives, how they affect self-representation, how they affect storytelling. We take all this and put it on stage.
With Slipstreaming we wanted to tackle the same topic but from the opposite direction: to bring the bodily experience of live performance to the web. It’s a way to step into the virtual world, while maintaining a strong connection with the physical one, because we are not interested in working only in the metaverse.
GIUSEPPE CHICO – Slipstreaming stands at the centre of a triangle whose vertices include videogames, movies and the metaverse. The project was born during the first lockdown: as you well know, the theatre world was in trouble and we were asked to present something that could fit the situation we were experiencing. At the time we weren’t ready, but that request stuck in our heads and today, finally, we are trying to answer it in a serious way with this project.
A. – What is Slipstreaming about?
B. M. – Our character is a vlogger who embarks on the world’s first residential cruise ship, built with the intention of creating a permanent community that experiments with diverse social, political and legal systems. Her goal is to investigate this community that is growing free from the restrictions of conventional citizenship and what she does is to wander around with her camera documenting what people are doing and talking to these residents, who are a kind of paradoxical group of survivalist ecologists, collapsologists, artists and activists who contribute in different ways to the life onboard.
From time to time she meets a more well-known public figure – a philosopher, a writer, … – and starts a conversation with them about the future of mankind, while they are in the midst of dramatic situations in which their theories are put to the test. For example, social psychologist Sheldon Solomon discusses his theory on terror management in the midst of a storm. All these conversations happen in real time and the guest discovers this environment as they walk.
A. – What is challenging, for you, about this project?
B. M. – Slipstreaming has not yet been tested. We talked to some creative technologists and they told us that it is absolutely feasible to build and that the biggest challenge will be the live performance, because there are several real-time interactions in the same piece. The vlogger is played by an actress in real time wearing the motion capture suit. For the guest, who could be anyone on the web, a web camera is sufficient because they will only animate the character’s face, while the body is animated by a second actor in a motion capture suit.
We opted for this configuration because we wanted to put these characters on a similar level. The vlogger can move in a fluid way because the actress is wearing a mocap suit, whereas the guest is not, so he or she risked being a kind of pre-programmed video game character. By having a second actor in a motion capture suit animate the guest avatar’s body, both avatars will have a fluid range of movements. But the fact of not being able to control their avatar’s body will put the guests in a kind of singular cognitive dissonance. In life I see you as we talk, but I can’t see myself. Here, seeing oneself as a character in a fictional scenario, who communicates but whose body is animated by someone else, brings into focus what the future metaverse might be, what kind of digital world we are creating, what possibilities of embodiment and experience we are developing. Slipstreaming is a test and experiment on this theme.
G. C. – The biggest challenge for me was the creation of the project, actually. A huge amount of work upstream! It is already an achievement, an object in itself. The mechanics that we thought up and developed is the project, the media. A new media that can potentially give rise to new formats.
My hope is that these little incursions and distortions that we create – for example, seeing ourselves in the third person and speaking in the first and knowing that you lend your voice and facial intention to an autonomous body – on a narrative and cinematic/aesthetic level can give rise to an original approach and an original character.
We built a kind of modular mechanics that has a matrix, a potential that will be developed, increased, fuelled by the interaction between the home audience, who will participate and contribute, and a direction that is yet to be defined, but which will be a kind of energy that sends information, triggers situations and initiates events.
B. M. – The challenge for me was to make all the elements, the complexity and the possibilities understood. There are no references. We are aware that if we go into production with this project we will not be able to do anything else for some time. So for now we are looking for development funds and collaborations. Not coming from this area, we are still not very connected to the people there.
How did the LAB go?
B. M. – It was the first time we were able to get feedback on our idea. Being selected and included in this wonderful group showed us that there is something interesting about this project and it was also a confirmation that there is no similar work going on. From this point of view, it was a way for us to realize that even if our work so far wasn’t in XR, there is a space for us, which technology is opening up precisely because we look at it differently.
In this first part of our CPH:Lab article, we talked about three of the nine projects selected for the current edition. Stay tuned for part two, which will cover the other six productions currently in development!
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