Week 1 - Introduction

Monday, 29 August. The first day of this minor, and the first day of our introduction week.

I travelled to Antwerp Central station, with no exact idea of what we were going to do. But I was told in an e-mail to bring a tote bag with me and that I was called "Grace".

After arriving at the station I found a place to rest, just outside of one of the main entrances. Then at 10:30 AM I put in my earphones and played the audio-file we were told to listen.
A voice told me that my name was Grace. The voice also told me what I could see, what was happening around me, what I was thinking, and what I was feeling. And it started to make me feel like I was actually seeing things through Grace's eyes. That I was Grace. (In a way it was like almost being hypnotised.)

It was my first time taking part in a subtlemob (something like a silent role play, with multiple people in a public space)
What made me feel immersed in this audiostory was being completely aware of what was going on around me. It was almost like I had a heightened awareness of my surroundings, because I was really listening, and focusing on what I saw around me. (Normally I'm always somewhere with my head in the clouds) And because I was told what sounds I could hear, the things I could smell, what I was thinking, what passersby were thinking, I was actually also more focused on my other senses. The audiofile also made me do little tasks, like following random strangers, or mimicking their behavior. And that also helped to immerse me, because I was actually, silently (without them knowing) interacting with other people. (though it didn't always work, sometimes I hesitated, and then I got distracted)
 Anyway, all these little things made me feel like I was in the moment and engaged with the story, and therefore I felt immersed.
The sound/calm music also played a big part in keeping me focused.

But the things that prevented me from being completely immersed were for example not being able to find any of the other actors when I was told that I was "looking" at them, or when they were performing actions. That confused me, and distracted me as well.
But that's the risk I suppose, if you want to be completely immersed all the conditions have to be right? You can't have any confusion about what's going on. But it also depends on the person's willingness to immerse themselves. If you're shy for example, and the story tells you to follow someone, but you don't want to, it ruins the experience.

But in short, what I have taken from this subtlemob is that you don't need a lot of complex high-tech tools to immerse yourself in a story, just some audio can be enough. And I focus a lot more on my other senses too now, because I experienced that a story can also be delivered through the other senses.

Storify yourself:
What excites me about the coming semester is that I'll be able to discover how to "transport" others into my stories, giving them experiences and maybe touching them in a way. I really want to explore how I can tell a story via multiple mediums, and what effect that will have on my story, but also the audience's experience.

What makes me insecure is the fact that most of my stories are usually related to myself. So I'm afraid all my stories will be too personal and the "same", as in having the same themes. But I'm also quite insecure about using all these new technologies; like VR, Arduino, etcetera, as I've never worked with that before.
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Tuesday, 30 august

A workshop on the Hero's Journey by Paul Segers.

First we got information on what the Hero's Journey entails.

A hero has to go on an adventure, and go through great suffering, in order to come back transformed (usually this means a psychological transformation)
In order to transform, the hero has to overcome a lot of fears and challenges first, he has to slay his "dragons".
What I found quite beautiful was that "hero", doesn't necessarily mean a hero with superpowers. Everyone is a hero on their own journey. We are all the main character in our story. And we all have our own "dragons" to slay.
What is my so called "dragon"? What are my fears and challenges in storytelling during this minor?
After writing that down we had to find our "allies", to go on a hero's journey together. So I joined Quintus, Mark, Tijmen and Bert.
So my group's fears were; not being original enough, not being able to leave a mark in the field of storytelling, and a fear of being forgotten. Being afraid of what the audience will think of our work. We tend to keep the audience in mind when creating, and that's actually quite frustrating at times. After a lot of discussing we all agreed that the best, most well known storytellers probably don't really care about what the audience will think, they just do what they feel is right. So how could we challenge our fear of not being good enough? We should try not too think too much about other people's reactions. But that proved to be quite difficult because we immediately wanted to take control. No, we had to give up our control.

Because we couldn't direct our journey/film, we decided to make a game  out of it, with rules. We had 3 dices, and every turn of the street we would roll the dices, and that would decide which way to go, who would walk, etcetera. The dices would direct our story. And then we would film that.

the playing rules

after coming back from our "journey", we watched what we had filmed, and a few parts had filmic qualities, but most didn't. In fact, a lot of it was really, really bad. But it was interesting to hear from others that a story did seem to develop, without any of us actually directing it or knowing what was going on. Especially the parts that were filmed without thinking too much, looked interesting. Happy little accidents! :)



I also really enjoyed the presentations of the other people's "journeys". People challenging their fears created a lot of new experiences, and therefore stories. Some stories were also quite personal, and they intrigued me the most. So that kind of alleviated my fear of being afraid of making personal stories. Because other people's personal stories are actually what I find most interesting.
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Wednesday, 31 august
Today we watched a lot of movies.

Documentaries, but also fiction.

What I mainly took from that day is that storytelling is a mindgame. So we as directors/ storytellers, play with our audience's mind. We manipulate their minds and try to control what they feel and think.
Ways to do this are by giving the right information at the right moment,  as that can affect the emotional impact.
We can change the order of things (editing, montage) and that way the emotional impact is bigger.
And by playing with audience's expectations. Do things that break a pattern. The audience will remember abnormalities, and that way your story will be remembered.

The style of the director can also affect our state of mind. Like Tarkovsky, his films tend to have really long shots, and because of that his films put you in a dreamstate.

So structure, form and style influence storytelling, and the audience's mind.

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Thursday, 1 september.

Perspectives on immersion.

 

“People have always wanted to in some way inhabit the stories that move them. The only real variable is whether technology gives them that opportunity.” - Frank Rose

This day helped me to find out what immersion exactly means to me.
To me, immersion is indeed a deep mental involvement with something. It's being completely engaged.

But when do I become immersed? It's mainly when something touches me emotionally, when something elicits an emotion from me, when I feel empathy, or can relate to the (characters or the situation in the ) story. Or when I am completely focused on something and feel like I'm in the moment. How do I reach this?
A lot of other interesting questions were also raised;

• "Does research into and application of human psychology in the creative process conflict with the autonomy, intention & integrity of the artist/storyteller?"So you have to know more about your audience to engage them in your story. You have to understand their psychology. Personally I think you have to balance this. If you only think about the audience you're selling yourself out. But I think artists naturally want to communicate with people through their work. And it's impossible to appeal to everyone, but if you just do what you think is right, the right audience will come to you. So the artist should stay true to himself.
• Immersion = to get into one state of mind/being to another. Why do we like this immersive experience? Is it escapism?

•  Why is storytelling in VR so problematic? For example, how will exciting moments work if the user looks away? Should we make new ways of storytelling to combat this?
  
• Looking at -> being there -> being it. How can we manipulate our senses so directly that we become "it"?

• I also really liked the question: Is immersion a means to an end or has it always been part of our aesthetic experience? I definitely agree with the last part of the question. When we see something that touches us, we already become immersed in it. That is just the effect the object has on us. Immersion can come naturally. So it's not necessarily something we have to strive for. We can become immersed by so many different things, it all depends on the person, and their personal interest I think.
  So while virtual reality is really cool and new, I think that more direct ways of immersion, that are still connected with our reality, appeal to me more. Like immersive theatre, music, role playing, installation & performance art, but also paintings/drawings. So I would actually prefer experimenting with these things more.

Also, isn't it more interesting when some things are left to the audience's imagination?
My main question after this day was; aren't simple tools just as effective, or maybe even more effective to reach immersion? This is something that I would like to research in the coming weeks.
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in short; this week made the meaning of immersion clearer, and helped me form my own definition of what it means to me. This week also raised a lot of interesting questions and showed me that immersive storytelling doesn't necessarily have to be done with virtual reality or other "high-tech" tools. It can be done in a more direct way, in our own reality, which appeals more to me. Engaging other senses is also interesting, and something I want to try in the future, because so far I've only really focused on the visual aspect of my work.