Within VR, we are now working on a project on the bombing of Bodø in 1940. The project will go into the depths of what a single event can have of significance and is intended to provide transferable learning to the current situation. By knowing our past, we will be better equipped for both understanding and reflection about our present. The VR project will, with time witnesses, take us back to the bombing of Bodø during World War II. Through the use of photographic geometry, volumetric capture, illustrations, 2d animation, interviews of witnesses and historians, music and sound, we want to give the visitor a close and informative experience of a historical event.
Inside the Narrative
VIRTUAL REALITY. Only mentioning the term can create a trembling expectation. A portal into a new and exciting digital world. However, this is no new technology. The 50s are considered the beginning of the development of VR. It is only in recent years that this technology has become available to the public in various forms. Large companies like Sony, Samsung, Google or Facebook, to mention a few, are investing big money into the development of XR technology (extended reality) that we find in various formats like AR mobile apps, 360 videoes on Youtube and the already iconic VR goggles that is being developed as screen technology for both VR, AR, and Mixed Reality. Although VR technology has undergone rapid development, it has not yet become a mainstream media alternative. The use of VR technology and experiences is to a greater extent found in fields such as architecture, product design, medical innovation, and the gaming industry. Despite all the activity around VR, the technology's relationship with storytelling is in a premature phase. How this "new" medium will affect the way we tell and develop stories is not yet clear. To create narrative experiences in VR, we must learn to tell stories differently than we are used to from film and literature. In books, films, comic books, theater, it is often important to capture viewers or readers in such a way that they are in a way locked into the world of fiction. This immersion into the narrative world is staged in the different media forms through numerous measures adapted to each medium. The ability to immerse audiences into a world of fiction is VR technology's most prominent feature. The immersion we are talking about here is not based on our own imagination but on the technology's ability to stimulate the senses in a direct way that automatically incorporates the audience into a potentially narrative universe. One of the major issues faced in relation to storytelling in VR is the relationship with the audience, as they now find themselves on the inside of the story.
Vicky Dobbs Beck executive in charge at ILMxLAB is at a lecture series at Siggraph 2019 stating their goal, in VR, to go from storytelling to the idea of storyliving. She is underlining the importance in VR, that you as the viewer are actually in the world and that you matter. The audience´s presence and actions can move the story forward. This could conceivably mean that you as an observer has a role to play and possibly not just as a fly on the wall? In the same lecture series at Siggraph 2019, Donald Mustard, director of the game Fortnite, at Epic Games, talks about how they in the ongoing production of the game avoid seizing the player's freedom and agency in the Fortnite world. The freedom of the players and their agency is to the core of their thinking. In terms of storytelling in VR, the idea of the player's or audience's possible roles on the inside of the story can be related to the intentions in the production of the game Fortnite and to Dobbs´s emphasis on the viewer's importance in the story within VR. Mustard also describes another key storytelling element that relates to the real-time dimension that is also part of VR as a digital online medium. This is the ability and opportunity of the game creator to provide relevant or surprising feedback to the players along the way. He explains this by the term "The campfire theory" where the storytelling is formed in the meeting between the audience and the narrator, in the same way as sitting around the campfire at night. In Fortnite, this is used in the development of the course of action as a result of players' actions and reactions. This mindset and thinking may perhaps be translated into VR experiences. The idea of feedback in relation to its audience is also found in the theater's feedback loop, describing the same phenomenon, only related to another form of media. Here it is the actors' meeting with their audience that forms the possibility of the story's transformation. When it comes to the audience's possible participation and role in a VR story, the reference to the interactive theater may be relevant.
The research project, Inside the Narrative, derives its name and focus from the narrative point of view of the VR media. The project has its academic position in visual communication at the Faculty of Arts, Music, and Design at the University of Bergen. The project's connection to professional fields such as illustration, animation and graphic design gives us a unique opportunity to help bring forth new perspectives and voices in VR storytelling that may differ from, for example, the engineering field, the computer games industry, journalism, medicine or the film industry. Knowledge from subject areas related to picture books, animation, editorial design, typography, or interaction design are examples of possible inputs into the exploration of VR technology's potential for these fields.
In the shadow of war
Within VR, I am now working on a project on the bombing of Bodø in 1940. The project will go into the depths of what a single event can have of significance and is intended to provide transferable learning to the current situation. By knowing our past, we will be better equipped for both understanding and reflection about our present. The VR project will, with time witnesses, take us back to the bombing of Bodø during World War II. Through the use of photographic geometry, volumetric capture, illustrations, 2d animation, interviews of witnesses and historians, music and sound, we want to give the visitor a close and informative experience of a historical event.