A leading director on the Taiwanese and international scene, founder of the Very Mainstream Studio and Very Theatre in Taipei, Tung-Yen Chou is no stranger to the immersive sphere. Although his use of technology is already apparent in his theatrical and performance practice, his trilogy IN THE MIST (2020) / GAZING, IN THE MIST (2023) / TRAVERSING THE MIST (2023) is a bold and formally conscious approach to the immersive. This year, he presents his new project FREE UR HEAD at Venice Immersive 2024.
2016: discovering immersive practice
Tung-Yen Chou – Like many people, I’m fascinated by digital technology and images. As a student, I was lucky enough to have a camera and to make several experimental short films. This was one of the early components of my artistic practice, and I’ve always welcomed technology with curiosity in my artistic practice. In 2010, I started hearing about panoramic videos, and made several scenes with dancers using these early immersive possibilities. The quality wasn’t extraordinary, but it helped me understand how a form of reality could be captured using these images.
T.-Y. C. – As virtual reality gradually established itself as a medium in its own right, I began to discover fascinating works like NOTES ON BLINDNESS: INTO DARKNESS and others. It was at Les Bains Numériques in Enghien-Les-Bains in 2016, and it opened my eyes to the immersive medium and virtual reality.Then I started to work on theatre project “Chronicle of Lightyear” which utilise 3D models and Unity on a stage with hologram projection. All these coincidences opened up a dialogue with the Kaohsiung Film Archive, which was looking for artists interested in VR. I tested more and more content, and was soon convinced that there was something to be done. I spontaneously proposed 2 projects: IN THE MIST and FREE UR HEAD. At the time, I hadn’t fully grasped the scope of what was to come: the technology was still in its infancy!
T.-Y. C. – With the positive response from the Kaohsiung Film Archive, my first priority was the short film 360 IN THE MIST. The Covid-19 crisis slowed us down a little, but between two confinements we were allowed to shoot. As a director and filmmaker, I can now say that it was a dream to be able to capture complete environments and render them for the public. VR was a natural choice for the resulting trilogy.
T.-Y. C. – My artistic practice has integrated VR very intuitively, and I believe that each work is a question in itself. It’s a question that’s personal to me, and it doesn’t matter what the final medium for questioning the public is. All my projects complete a form of personal quest and artistic research. As artists, we create our own tools for questioning reality. Technological innovation is just one more step in this quest. Theatre is based on a form of illusion, that of recreating reality. Virtual reality is no exception.
IN THE MIST, a trilogy that took 4 years to complete
T.-Y. C. – Having made 3 versions around IN THE MIST (plus a traditional short film ”Kiss” on the same subject), I’m starting to see the place it’s taken over the last 5 years. And in a way, we’ve followed the evolution of technology and what it can offer us! Today, everything is recorded, on hard disks, and can continue to run if I’m asked to. Perhaps one day motion capture technology, or other technologies, will evolve and allow us to update certain parts of our past performances. But I’m very happy with what exists today.
T.-Y. C. – The whole IN THE MIST project has been gratifying, tackling themes that are very dear to me. There are always questions to be asked when proposing an explicit work, but each performance has brought us positive feedback. And festivals have played an important role in spreading the word! I was particularly surprised by the response from audiences back home in Taiwan, both male and female. But the trilogy spoke to an international audience, and raised questions about the impact of VR.
Find more with “With TRAVERSING THE MIST, we share a certain intimacy between each other” – Tung-Yen Chou (Very Theatre)
FREE UR HEAD: an insanely crazy proposition…
T.-Y. C. – FREE UR HEAD started out as a whimsical idea to get the audience dancing with their heads actively. I observed when a group of audience watching the same VR film together, sometimes their heads moving in the same direction, in a form of synchronicity. I thought it would be a useful relaxing “exercise” for people’s stiff necks nowadays with our heads glued to our phones and screens. And we can play my “morning routine”-Vogue by Madonna, so people can Vogue together without rehearsal! And thenThis led to ideas for choreography, and a desire to get them moving at the same time. With my team, we started experimenting with mirror images and sequences: it wasn’t as technically obvious in 2019 as it is today!
T.-Y. C. – Virtual reality, like immersive theatre, means that each viewer sees a very personal version of what you’re proposing. So we had to find the modus operandi to create perfect synchronicity. We worked on prototypes in public, to get enough useful spectators to test increasingly crazy things. Inside the experience, you navigate a tunnel following light signals, and there’s a narrative intention that takes you through several stages and emotions.
T.-Y. C. – This test phase brought us the funding to design FREE UR HEAD as it exists today, with the possibility of directing several hundred spectators at the same time (under headsets, in front of a second observing audience). But this gave FREE UR HEAD a more concrete and serious tone than we had imagined.
… but not without fundamental questions
T.-Y. C. – We’ve gradually moved from piloting the experience via a computer, then to a tablet, and now directly via the dancer/choreographer’s headset and controllers. It was in this process that FREE UR HEAD emerged as an experiment in the power of the individual over the collective – giving the project a more political slant. There’s a kind of ritual here, where technology and our stage “conductor” guides the audience. But is he a modern-day magician, a digital dictator? It’s a fascinating reflection on our social habits (social networks…). In that sense, I’m not sure the term “collective” is relevant, because it’s all still very individual – and very connected to the idea of following a global movement.
T.-Y. C. – Initially, my wish was to bring a new form of collective experience to the audience. The narrative journey is designed to take them into our world. We started with a musical mix of well-known pop songs, which made it easier for the audience to understand. But in the future, we’re going to integrate our own musical compositions, which means respecting a musical rhythm that will speak intuitively to each spectator. Each chapter of FREE UR HEAD can incorporate different music or dances, revealing very different themes in each performance. And this will enable us to create different sound ambiances, depending on the occasion and opportunity. It’s a work in constant evolution, in the end, which will give us the opportunity to work over time.
T.-Y. C. – My own challenge with FREE UR HEAD is to imagine these evolutions, both visual and sonic, while the aim for the viewer is to follow a precise point. So there’s no opportunity to visit the rest of the environments, to stop or change direction – if our work is well done. It’s not a video game. The possibilities for (visual) interaction or narration must be kept to a minimum so as not to interfere with the overall experience. And we keep the possibility of motion sickness to a minimum, which has happened very rarely in the prototyping phases – even with over 70 people connected.
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