Jeffrey Shaw

Interactive Cinema

"there is a dialectical relationship between technological progress and the re-invention of the narrative - with new technological possibilities, we can create new ways (and logics!) of story-telling. The viewer becomes a physical participant in the cinematic space. He showed a very nice example of a big white pillow-like sculpture that served as a projection screen while visitors could jump all over it (unfortunately he didn’t mention where and when it took place). Another example is his own work ConFIGURING the Cave (1996), a cave-installation with a wooden doll in the middle that serves as an interface to render the virtual environment projected into the cave. By moving the doll or parts of the doll’s body, the projected virtual world changes. There are a total of 7 different virtual environments in the work. The projection is all around you, on all walls, the ceiling, the floor, and gives you a feeling of total immersion. It becomes an all-surrounding, all enclosing cinematic space. This feeling of immersion is even strengthened because you are actually physically involved in the work."



"A 120-square metre circular screen surrounds the audience and provides the environment for an wholly ‘immersive’ three-dimensional cinematic experiences. AVIE allows audiences to wander at will through the projection space without having to sit in a fixed location as in a conventional cinema, interacting with the projected information as if they are really there. Viewers wearing three-dimensional glasses step inside a cylindrical cinema screen measuring four metres high and 10 metres in diameter. Twelve digital projectors create a high-resolution stereoscopic 3D image on this screen, and the audio is spatially enhanced via a 24- channel surround sound system. (…) Over three hundred video clips are simultaneously displayed and distributed around AVIE’s huge circular screen. Using a special interface the viewer can select, sort, re-arrange and link these video clips. These move about and play themselves in a virtual all-surrounding three-dimensional space that provides the viewer with an engrossing density and intensity of ever changing narrative events.”"


http://www.movingweb.org/2008/02/28/sonic-acts-xii-conference-report/