Field notes: Belfast XR Festival
Sat 4th & Sun 5th November 2023, Belfast, Northern Ireland
https://www.belfastxrfestival.com/
It was a pleasure to hang out at The Black Box in Belfast for the second instance of Belfast XR, an immersive storytelling festival led by the wonderful Deepa Mann-Kler.
I attended the VR Cinema, and a couple of excellent panel discussions in a lovely, cosy bar. The venue wraps its walls around us reassuringly as stags in jockey silks pedal past us belting out Mr Brightside from their six-seater beer bikes.
Most of the VR content in the cinema comes from the StoryFutures Xperience stable and features a range of work developed in the UK. My slot was 75 minutes long, which is about the right amount VR in one sitting for me. It did mean that I only got to taste a small sample of the treats on offer. There is a full list at the end of these notes, and more info about the festival programme here. Belfast XR Festival continues until Sunday 5th November 2023.
Buried in the Rock
by ScanLAB Projects
As the rope snakes its way into the darkness, I follow Pam and Tim Fogg deep underground into the Tulleyard caves, not 10 miles away from where I physically am now in the festival venue. Gradually revealed is a spectacular network of caves, a world completely alien to me, but that Tim and Pam understand well as two of only a handful people known to have ventured into this magical, hidden wilderness.
In inimitable ScanLAB style, our subterranean adventure is rendered as an ethereal point cloud, creating the volume, depths and edges of this vast cave system. The point cloud ‘shows the work’ of rendering such an image with LiDAR scanning data. I appreciate that they do not seek to hide that the image is the result of thousands of laser pulses bouncing back from surfaces. The result is a version of the world that may be closer to a bat’s perceptual reality than that of a person.
As the interloper in this space I have no climbing gear so I use the thumbstick on my controller to move myself around, in and out of the caves. I listen in to Pam and Tim as they share stories of rope safety, the destructive influence of human breath underground, previously undiscovered bugs and a terrifying incident with a falling boulder and a crushed leg.
The only thing that takes me out of the experience is the placement of the subtitles. To be clear, I very much appreciate VR experiences that include subtitles as the default. In this case however, I found them to be very close, and tethered to my gaze. As such they float in the direct centre of my eyeline, sometimes occluding the experience itself. For me personally, placing the subtitles a bit further away and a bit lower down within my field of view would be a big improvement.
There’s lots to like here, but perhaps surprisingly my favourite thing about this experience is the audio. Wildlife sound specialist, Axel Drioli has replicated the gorgeous, drippy, salty, echoing sounds of the caves perfectly. I understand he did this by taking live recordings on location as an integral part of the team’s expedition. The sound is expertly positioned and treated by Pascal Wyse so that the acoustics of the underground cavern resonate like a vast cathedral with a swimming pool in place of pews. The moment I navigate out of the tunnels, the sound is blunted and the reverberation is gone. Leaving me in no doubt that I have left the majesty of this space behind. I push the thumbstick to go back in and boom, I am in crawling through the tunnels and caves once more. Masterful.
If you fancy a rabbit hole to dive down, Axel and his brother Ario are currently tracing the bird migratory pattern of the East Atlantic Flyway through Europe and Africa, capturing more incredible audio for another immersive experience, Sounding Wild. You can follow their adventures here.
Kindred
by Electric Skies
A beautiful story of one non-binary person’s journey into parenthood, and the hideous societal and procedural obstacles that they encounter along the way. The storytelling is quiet, honest and relatable, moving between quite abstract renderings of concepts such as belonging, to grounded, claymation-style scenes of domesticity and the banal but extraordinary business of trying to help a small person to navigate the world.
Life Cycles
by Surround Vision
A historical love letter to the bicycle. A series of charming vignettes about the role that bikes have played through the ages, including their use by suffragettes as a means of independent travel and resistance, and by blackout wardens during WW2 to reprimand people failing to turn their lights off after dark. The use of hand tracking is welcome and effective, allowing me to pump up bike tyres and loudly peep a blackout whistle without touching a controller. I did find the interactivity a little confusing at times as I don’t really have a role to play in this experience, other than as a witness to history. As such the gestural interactivity felt a little out of place.
Three Lights
by Virtus Studios & Electric Skies
It’s hard to find new ways to tell stories of the Battle of the Somme. Over a hundred years on, the human-scale horrors of WW1 trench warfare still loom large in the UK pubic imagination, showing up regularly in school poetry books, history lessons, novels, theatre, countless documentaries and the annual rituals of poppy emblazoned remembrance. Lest we forget.
Virtuos Studios use VR to reach for that elusive new way into this moment in time. I sit on an upturned box in a swampy trench whilst my big brother Stanley and friend Ralph talk about something and nothing. Initially I don’t realise they are talking to me as my chair is slightly offset from the defined play area so the eye contact doesn’t quite line up. A quick bum shuffle soon puts me back into the action. The piece is interactive but in a gentle way that allows you to mostly sit with the story and the conversation feels authentic. The tragic resolution is on the cards from the start, but is no less heart breaking when it comes. To be completely honest, I’m not sure I gained much that I didn’t already have in the locker from this experience. Perhaps for those younger than, me, or those less steeped in the cultural tea of romantic regret, this might sink in a little deeper.
UnEarthed: The Beetle Story
by Factory42 and Meta Immersive Learning
This was so much fun! At the start of the encounter, I am briefed by a floating robot named HAZZI (short for…I have no idea) voiced by the brilliant Richard Ayoade. The Professor (voiced by the equally brilliant Indira Varma) has gone missing on a mission to research biodiversity in the Tongrass National Forest. HAZZI and I must follow a series of video journal clues that she has conveniently left at key locations so that we can catch up to her, and learn a little something about the natural world along the way.
HAZZI is cut from the same cloth as these happy campers, although perhaps with a bit more hazard tape holding him together.
HAZZI exudes the dry wit and hapless energy of Holly from Red Dwarf and delivers some cracking one liners. Despite being in a quiet room with a lot of people doing Serious VR, I found myself gleefully and noisily giggling from start to finish. Comedy remains something of a timorous beastie for VR and I am delighted to see it so well handled here.
Another thing I wasn’t expecting was the level of interactivity. This experience wants you to take part and to move, whether it be climbing onto the back of a beetle or snatching pollen from the air. Ten points to the quick-thinking invigilator who (I now realise) moved the table away from me the moment I decided to stand up and start flailing my arms in all directions. In fact, thanks to everyone involved in this lovely festival. I really enjoyed myself!
Things I didn’t get to see:
Goliath: Playing with Reality by Anagram
When Something Happens by Boom Clap Play
Empire Soldiers by MBD
Monoliths by Pilot Theatre
This is your country too by Strictly Immersive
The Longest Walk by Somewhat Insettling
The Museum of Imagined Futures by Indigo Storm & Studio ANRK
Promenade by Shroom Studio
Locker Room by Rematch
Drop in the Ocean by Vision3
(Hi)Story of a Painting by Monkeyframe
Get Punked! by Visualise
Off the Record by No Ghost
Mrs Sherlock Holmes by Dillmeadow Media
Missing Ten Hours by Electric Skies
