Editorial⎜A look back at IDFA DocLab R&D Summit 2024

There was an irony at the core of IDFA’s DocLab programme this year. Distribution, which has long been a topic of conversation in the community, was front and center at its day-long DocLab R&D Summit. A difficult discussion for any art form, but as technologies are rapidly changing – both in the software used to create and produce, and the hardware to watch an exhibit – the issue at hand for XR is even more challenging.

DocLab is always experimenting with form (and function) – pushing the boundaries of new media, XR and live performance – so it’s not surprising that the work exhibited reflects creativity and experimentation and ranged from singular to collective experiences. While there was a lot of AI – and technology-influenced work, there were also in-person encounters, architectural installations and many multi-formed pieces. There were less VR-headset based works in the curatorial programme, or being pitched in the DocLab Forum. Which was ironic to me in reflection of the distribution challenges the industry faces. 

But DocLab’s curation gave us opportunities to embrace and ponder those questions.

For instance, several pieces in competition – BURN FROM ABSENCE, GOOGLE BOOKS, LIMBOPHOBIA and A DOLLHOUSE FOR QUEER IMAGINARIES – were adapted for a dome presentation (by DocLab in partnership with WeMakeVR and Artis Planetarium). They didn’t always work, but it was interesting to see how different forms could bring varied ways of experience to a piece.

BURN FROM ABSENCE is a four-screen installation of narration and family album images that artist Emeline Courcier created with AI to explore her missing history. In the dome experiment, you could see multiple image at once, instead of having to choose which screen or image to take in. The subtitles and photos could have been more visual aligned or coordinated, but with more time in development it could have been an interesting manifestation of the piece.

Watching LIMBOPHOBIA in the headset and the dome were very different experiences. In the latter, the images wash over you in a haunting tapestry; in the headset, you feel like you are at the window, the precipice yourself.

DOLLHOUSE was conceived as a place for the maker Queer.Space to feel safe (as a gay man in South Africa) and connect with other in a safe space. As a stand-alone VR experience, you miss out on the presence and connection that comes from others in the space. (If this is a VR world, then how do we exhibit it in a space where you can’t control for who else is in the “room”?) But in the dome, the audience watched the room projected above them, with “players” on stage at the planetarium and online from across the world, making them feel connected not only to the world inside, but also the one across the globe.

Unpacking the challenges of distribution

This kind of adaption attempt shows how difficult the conversation about distribution is. A piece can be realized meticulously in the director’s head, in the technological setting or creation, but it still can become a different experience entirely based on how a festival or event presents it, or if you’re watching alone in your own home.

VR headset-based experiences are easier to be consistent despite the surroundings, but they are stand alone. Increasingly, collective, multi-player headset-based experiences are appearing, which bring up new challenges – how big a space do you need? What happens when a headset stops working, does it interrupt all the players? If people drop out (like many have during my collective experiences, because of lack of time preparation or feeling ill), does it ruin the experience for others? (The first time I attempted to do ROAMANCE, where two people at different stations in the exhibit meet each other in a virtual world to take a journey together, I was “stood up” by the other person entirely, and the person pulled in to replace them disappeared halfway through from dizziness, leaving me sadly unable to continue the piece. Thankfully, the second time around, I had a wonderful partner – early in the piece her avatar asked mine, “shall we walk together?”, making me feel unexpectedly connected.)

And then we have full scale immersive experiences, which don’t necessarily require active participation from individuals so people can just observe or interact without impacting the collective. But lack of venues equipped with the proper space, tech equipment and mindset hinders the further distribution of these pieces.

For example, one of the summit’s breakout sessions went behind the scenes of distributing IN PURSUIT OF REPETITIVE BEATS. Director Darren Emerson and producer Dan Tucker went through decisions in making the installation piece adaptable – both for touring and audience formats and business models, from smaller, less-installation scenarios that focus less on the physical environment and more on the headset experience, to larger-scale installations that allow for more people to experience the piece at one time. (When a festival partner approached me about showing the piece back in its early release days, we sadly didn’t have the resources or space to exhibit it.) Being able to pivot and adapt to provide options for exhibitors at various stages of the spectrum is crucial in this time, and could be the key to a longer “tail” of distribution.

Other break-out sessions looked at the companies and partnerships that are pushing a more sustainable distribution ecosystem – from Diversion’s exhibition efforts, including its new system allowing multiple spectators to view 6DOF VR simultaneously, to POPKraft’s (one of the R&D Summit’s sponsors) touring of individual works and partnering with exhibition venues and cultural institutions. Invite-only sessions brought distributors, exhibitors and artists together to ponder how to tour location-based experiences, quantify VR and extend the life of immersive installations.

MIT Open Doclab launched this year’s research collaboration (with IDFA DocLab) on shaping the future of independent XR distribution, which will start with a mapping and hopefully end with building a new ecosystem. Some problem statements identified that life after festivals is challenging, that we need to recognize there should be different paths for different types of XR experiences, that makers also need to think about how to distribute and networks should exist for them and for venues. The responsibility doesn’t lie on just one group’s shoulders, but covers makers, audiences and venues, and all need to be considered when finding a solution. And at the intersection of all of these are issues of lack funding, standards and criticism.

These conversations all resonated in the works in the exhibition and pitched in the DocLab Forum.

New pieces and works-in-progress are playing with different forms

For ENTROPIC FIELDS OF DISAPLACEMENT, (Winner of IDFA DocLab Storytelling Award) artist/director Pegah Tabassinejad uses recorded prompts via earbuds to guide eight walking performances which feature the duality of identities at home and displaced, displayed as a multi-screen installation. The DocLab opening ceremony offered her concept also as a live performance, with attendees guiding Pegah through the streets of Amsterdam. Having done the live performance piece three times before, she noted this was a beautiful and enjoyable experience for her, because of the audience’s creativity and care. In discussing exhibition options, she notes the eight screen multi-channel display is really the only way to do justice to the work, although we did muse on its adaption to a dome environment (maybe even with the live performance!)

Sister Sylvester’s performance lecture DRINKING BRECHT: AN AUTOMATED LABORATORY EXPERIENCE, a narrative interweaving biology, history and participatory chemistry experiments, was a departure from her previous works in that it was a pre-recorded not live narration for the small audience gathered around the lab tables, allowing the piece to be experienced without depending on her personal energy levels (while still managing to capture her warmth, humour and percipient train of thought) and to be exhibited without her physical presence.

Makers experimenting with passthrough, offering a way to explore space and an option between AR and VR. This could complicate exhibition, but also provide less-strict options. For example, FRAGILE HOME, a mixed-reality exploration/meditation on the concept of home (framed here in the context of the Ukraine war), is set in the physical set of a living room. Participants walk around the room in passthrough, pick up virtual objects and experience the changing environment. Although the in-headset experience reflects the set, director Ondřej Moravec believes it can be scaled and distributed to anyone that has a couch.

In the forum, projects took mixed forms, from web-based games to dual installation/immersive 6DOF pieces to fully live-immersive experiences, showing the field is not holding back experimentation despite the “distribution question”. SLIPSTREAMING, for instance, incorporates live avatar interaction into its ambitious animated interactive series. The pieces with more traditional storytelling and interactivity still stood out for their beautiful art direction and evocative narratives.  Proposals ranged from already completed projects looking for distribution or outreach support (like the relevant and tech-savvy designed game TROLLS VS. ELVES, which puts the player in the role of perpetuating or challenging misinformation around the Ukraine war) to those in the early stages of development, like Anagram’s DocLab Forum pitch-winning project AMORPHOUS about body dysphoria, seeking research, development and production funds. (DocLab attendees had a chance to participate in the research during one of DocLab’s new playrooms, and director May Abdalla shared reflections on the experience during the summit.)

As it is with so many contemporary XR pieces, subjects circled mostly around memory, philosophy, health and well-being, gender rights and technology. To temper the seriousness, however, many projects infused difficult subjects with some humour or playfulness. For example, THE TIME OF A MOMENT, an interactive piece about dementia, will incorporate joyful memories and celebration of life into the thread of identity loss.

Simon Wood and Meghna Singh, directors of the award-winning CONTAINER, won a special mention for their piece THE FOUR FLOORS OF FANEUIL HALL, which they are developing in three different but interconnected outputs that explore the history and activities corresponding to the floors of the building owned by a transatlantic slave trader: a projection map on the building, an immersive installation with a 360° visual journey, and a phone/tablet AR experience.

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DocLab’s theme this year, “This is not a simulation”, is not only a reference to the state of the world and the reality that lies behind what technology has created, but also a reflection of the state of our XR industry. As the curated works and pitches show, there’s room for diversity of form and content, experimentation and awe. It’s prime time now, this is not a simulation. It’s time for that thriving ecosystem.