From the early days of silent cinema to today's emerging new technologies such as 360-degree panoramic filming, the film industry has begun to change as technology continues to evolve, transforming the audience's experience and engagement with cinema and filmmaking. This paper will review Eric Kurland's ‘History of VR’ and Lev Manovich's ‘The Poetics of Augmented’ to understand the development and application of technologies related to immersive experiences. Eric Kurland talked about the changes and advances of this technology over time and its applications in different aspects of life, entertainment and military. Lev Manovich, on the other hand, explored different perspectives on the growth of media, which has led to the ubiquitous and commercialization of information to the extent that cities and living spaces are covered by screens. This paper will also discuss the Steven Spielberg movie 'Ready Player One' (2018), which showcases Kurland and Manovich's ideas.
Kurland's ‘History of VR’ is a detailed study of the evolution of the concept of virtual reality and the technologies that demonstrate it. As Manovich discusses, these technologies and devices have evolved over time to create more realistic and immersive experiences, regardless of the time period in which the medium was developed to produce them. Stereoscopes, the original props that provided people with the experience of three-dimensional imagery, provide the illusion of spatial depth by having each eye of the viewer look at a slightly different image. This technology brought immersion to the viewer through vision and was popular for its ability to virtually transport people to places they could not physically visit. Vision has been a vehicle for immersive experiences for a long time, for example, the panorama of the 18th and 19th centuries placed the viewer in an immersive virtual environment by enhancing the illusion of depth and simulating reality, as well as the architectural design of surrounds. In terms of cinema, surround design was also a major means of providing audience immersion, for example, Cinerama used multiple projectors and curved screens to display stereoscopic films. With the advent and development of head-mounted devices, haptics is also taken into account. The seat can simulate in real time some of the actions that accompany visuals, giving the viewer a sense of immersion through the simulated environment. Kurland's article focuses on the history of technology but does not do much research on its relationship to people and culture.
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Manovich's work ‘The Poetics of Augmented’ complements Kurland's article in a sense. He defines augmented space as a physical space covered with dynamically changing information, and notes that this information is likely to be in the form of localized multimedia for each user. At the same time, he considers augmentation to be defined in the realm of culture as “an idea and cultural and aesthetic practice rather than as technology”. In addition to this, Manovich points out that the difference between immersion and augmentation depends on our understanding of the concept of addition and subtraction, adding new information to an experience or adding a completely different experience. The key difference between virtual reality and augmented space is that the former builds artificial spatial experiences that are independent of their surroundings, while the latter creates digital information layers on top of real space. The ability of augmented space to regulate social and cultural change can be seen in this context, as the mobility of media is fully exploited. People consume virtual spaces through electronic devices such as, for example, mobile phones and giant electronic screens, which alter the perception of space, time and social relations. At the same time, a new urban landscape is created as we walk through screen-dense environments. In Manovich's words, augmented spaces change the socio-cultural experience of the built environment by placing individuals in the whole environment and allowing them to actively explore it on their own. In other words, the result of the proliferation of augmented reality is that the digital and physical worlds are no longer subordinate, but together become part of the hybrid space that one experiences. Furthermore, Manovich compares galleries to white boxes that are more than just collections of two-dimensional surfaces, noting that they are dynamic, whereas black boxes (cinemas) are more static because cinema has become commercialized. The cinema is commodified and standardized, its form dependent on the same environment of fixed technology: a dark room, rows of seats and a film projector. As Kurland says earlier, when people try to change the cinema tradition, it is the physical and software interfaces like the projector that are impacted.
‘Ready Player One’ (2018), directed by Steven Spielberg, showcases some of the ideas Kurland and Manovich came up with. As a film shot on digital 3D cameras, the viewer views the imaging through 3D glasses and undergoes brain processing to produce depths near and far. According to Kurland, much of the technology gives the viewer a sense of immersion through vision, ‘Ready Player One’ can be said to enhance the presentation of depth in the picture space by extending the space within the screen beyond it, and for the receiving subject, this break from the screen forward in three dimensions creates a sense of surround. In addition, the film is also about VR and a full VR experience center was created for people to experience at the South by Southwest Film Festival. The film's characters experience different 'realities' in the VR world through head-worn and hand-held devices, demonstrating Kurland's suggestion that the technology allows the audience to interact with the environment while still being immersive. At the same time, the film shows the poster to people on a number of giant digital screens in Times Square. This ties in with Manovich's suggestion that users explore a space for consistency and visual stimulation, and that their desire to buy clothes evolves into a need to maintain a lifestyle. People navigate between the densely packed big-screen billboards and browse social media on their phones for information about the film, making up a hybrid space.
In summary, the radical cultural transformations of the information society era also involve space and its systems of representation and organization. As with audio, video, images and texts, space itself becomes a medium. At the same time, technological development is closely linked to supply and demand. Technologies such as VR and AR, coupled with urban screens, are mediating public space, bringing elements of cinema-like enclosed spaces to open and collective spaces.
References
- Kurland, Eric. 'History of VR'. Virtual Reality Filmmaking: Techniques & Best Practices for VR Filmmakers, Taylor & Francis Group, 2018, pp. 8–17.
- Manovich, Lev. ‘The Poetics of Augmented Space’. Visual Communication, vol. 5, no. 2, 2006, pp. 219–240.
- ‘Ready Player One’. Dir. Steven Spielberg. Perf. Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, and Ben Mendelsohn. Warner Bros. Pictures, 2018. Film.
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