Field notes: LFF Expanded 2023 Exhibition
Bargehouse at OXO Tower Wharf
6–22 October, 11:00–21:00 Info and Tickets
Sharing field notes from my flying visit to London Film Festival (LFF) Expanded Exhibition, the ticketed part of the immersive strand of the festival. Tickets are £20 or £15 for concessions. And £10 for those aged 25 and under. There are also a range of experiences available for free around London, and via the Meta TV app for with access to a Meta headset anywhere in the world. I only had time to see a fraction of the wonderful work on show and would love to hear from those who had different experiences to me.
Consensus Gentium
Lead artist: Karen Palmer
I’ll admit, I made an absolute beeline for this one, arriving before my fetching pink wristband had claimed its first arm hair. I have seen some of Karen’s work before, and seen her talk as the prophetic ‘Storyteller of the Future’ a couple of times. Couple that with the fact the amazing Tom Millen is on board as producer, and that they smashed it at SXSW this year, bringing home the coveted ‘Best in XR Award’….I was not going to be out-queued on this one.
Fair to say I had high expectations and Consensus Gentium did not disappoint. In front of me was an iPhone and ring light, leaving me in no doubt that the phone camera could see me. Before long it became apparent that this phone was watching me back and making algorithmic judgements about who I am and what I think. Reading the conscious and sub-conscious movements of my face. Without giving too much away, this piece does an amazing job of setting up a troublingly plausible near future where we are required to choose between convenience and access to public services (travel, healthcare, social contact) and privacy (freedom from surveillance, social profiling, algorithmically engrained racism). The consequence of rejecting such terms is to be labelled a dissident and left vulnerable to abusive state control.
The dilemma is clear. My Nana is ill, she may be about to leave us and if I want to be with her and my mum at this most intimate of family moments, I have to download an app and ‘earn’ the right to travel by gradually giving up my rights and compromising the freedoms of those around me. To refuse is to face the consequences.
This is an interactive, branching narrative, and the choices you take (with your face!) influence how the story evolves. I am usually unconvinced about this as a format. Former students will recognise the following questions from me:
- Are the choices people are asked to make really meaningful or will you just drop them back on the main track later on?
- If they are meaningful, are you confident you can make multiple, equally satisfying narrative arcs or are you imagining most people will pick one or two of the tracks you design?
- Are you hoping no-one picks the branches that didn’t really work out or don’t really make sense? Will you blame them for ‘getting it wrong’ if they do?
- If audience members only experiences one ending isn’t there inherent frustration/disappointment at missing out on the stories they didn’t see?
Thanks to excellent storycraft, I have to admit only the last one applies for me here. As I moved through the experience tension built and built. With each swerve I tried harder to control what was happening, clinging to any semblance of agency in the face of an overwhelming feeling that nothing I did could fight the tide of parasitic progress. The precarity of it made the whole thing feel urgent, unreliable and hugely consequential.
Consensus Gentium elegantly warns against the perils of state and corporate abuses of technology, whilst training us in how to stay alert and focussed and to be skilful and deliberate in our engagement with them.
Hot recommend.
The Imaginary Friend
Lead artist: Steye Hallema
I love work that involves the body. Very often I find VR viewership to be a bit like watching a film — by and large better if you just sit your fleshy meat bag down and let your imagination do the work. In this piece, Hallema involves your the body from the start as you are invited to stretch out your arms “as though you want a massive hug” and are measured for your wingspan. From then on you wave, flap and fly your way through the extraordinary and heart-bursting world of the young protagonist, Daniel as he struggles to process his grief. My favourite parts were when I was invited to use my own voice to communicate with him, the sound of my voice colourfully animated and echoed into his world. Meanwhile my unmediated shouts presumably caused my fellow festival go-ers to giggle/grimace, totally bereft of context for why I believed so strongly that “I CAN DO IT”. The Imaginary Friend is a tender and masterful example of embodied and interactive storytelling.
Letter from Drancy
Lead artist: Darren Emerson
Oh dear. Here I am again. Handing a headset drenched in tears back to a kind invigilator at a festival. Watching her wonder if the hygiene wipes she has will be able absorb that much emotion. Appreciating her suggesting to me that I ‘take a moment’ before swimming back into the festival current.
This is the story of holocaust survivor Marion Deichmann, told in her own words and brought vividly to life through 360 video, games engines, stylized animation, volumetric capture, and a gorgeous spatial soundtrack.
Thank you to Darren Emerson for your sensitive, patient and expertly paced storytelling. Thank you to All Seeing Eye for the beautiful, genre-bending, human and epic scale VR production. And thank you to Marion Deichmann for sharing your story, your memories of your mother, and for reminding us of the horrors inflicted by humans to humans during the holocaust. And finally, thank you all for letting us see of the kindness and courage that rose up to meet it.
Forager
Lead artists: Winslow Porter and Elie Zananiri
I only saw the magical teaser video for this (see above) but it was a welcome break from non-stop head-setting, and lovely to see a (Bristol-based) Ultraleap 2 sensor in the wild. Especially as it was being used in such a cool way.
Porter and Zananiri have done a gorgeous job of capturing the growth cycle of fungi through meticulously and lovingly photographing them from every angle, every 30 mins for over a week to be able to create 3D imagery, using photogrammetry to manipulate time and show us their amazing dance on a more human scale. Sadly, time was my enemy today and I didn’t have enough of it to see the featured VR version, but I hear more things are coming from this exciting team so will keep my eyes to the forest floor in anticipation.
THINGS I DIDN’T SEE
Flow by Adriaan Lokman, Murals by Alex Topaller, Daniel Shapiro and Artem Ivanenko, The Fury by Shirin Neshat, Colored (Noire) by Pierre-Alain Graud and Things Fall Apart by CyberRäuber.
