Living Distance is a contemporary piece of immersive art from China that casts the audience in the role of a tooth that takes a celestial journey into space. Director Xin Liu 刘昕 is an artist and mechanical engineer, who built a physical, crystalline robotic sculpture that containing a tooth that was actually sent into suborbital space on Blue Origin’s New Shepard Mission NS-11 rocket ship as a part of MIT Media Lab’s Space Exploration Initiative. The installation consisted of a dual-screen video installation documenting the journey into space, and then you take the perspective of the tooth within the actual VR experience.
One of the most striking aspects of Living Distance was their collaboration with D-BOX technologies in order to create the illusion of zero gravity with haptic effects that simulate the feelings of weightlessness and being lost in space. I had a chance to catch up with lead artist Xin Liu and LumiereVR producer and collaborator QinYa (Jenny) Guo (previously interviewed in episode #659) about their experiential design process, creating haptic experiences, and the deeper cultural rituals around teeth in China.
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.412] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. Hello, my name is Kent Bye and welcome to the Voices of VR podcast. So continuing on in my series of looking at some of the XR experiences at Sundance 2020, specifically the immersive storytelling innovations, technological innovations, as well as the experiential design process of the creators. Today's episode is on Living Distance, which is one of the first contemporary art pieces from China that's being featured here and the Sundance Film Festival. And the artist and director, Shen Liu, as well as the executive producer, Jenny Goua, had a chance to be able to talk to them and compact their process. So the interesting thing about this piece is that you are sitting down in what feels like a lazy boy, but they have the D-Box technology. So it gives you like this sense of this haptic chair. It's also moving in pitch and yaw. And so you have a little bit of movement. So it feels like you're on a seat, but you're moving forwards and backwards and to left and right. So you get this sense that you're actually in this weightlessness because the story is that they built this whole mechanism to take a tooth and to send it up into space. As you're waiting, you see this 10 minute video art installation across two screens. And so you can get the backstory of them actually like building this box and sending it up into space. And then when you're in the VR experience, you're taking the perspective of the tooth itself and you get sent up into space and you're kind of floating into space and moving around and whatnot. So actually really embodied experience. And I think probably one of the best experiences that I've seen that integrates this haptic technology from D-Box into this haptic chair, really great integration. So anyway, that's what we're covering on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Shen and Jenny happened on Monday, January 27th, 2020 at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:01:54.294] Xin Liu: My name is Xin Liu. I'm the director and artist on this project, Leaving Distance. And this is my second time working on a VR project. And for me, I was interested in more like the embodied storytelling aspect of the medium. So for the first project I did, I was more like supporting role. And this time for Leaving Distance, I had the chance to really create something that is true to my heart. Yeah.
[00:02:22.828] Jenny Guo: Hello, everyone. This is Jenny Guo. I'm the executive producer for Living Distance. I also do run a VR company, so this is not my first time, but definitely one of the really great piece I have produced and collaborated on.
[00:02:39.079] Kent Bye: Great. So maybe each of you could give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into virtual reality.
[00:02:46.229] Xin Liu: My background is actually in mechanical engineering and I studied fine art in grad school later. Later on, I went to MIT Media Lab where lots of different experiments between technology, design, art, really. sparked my interest and VR is one of them. And my group at the time was also the group that very much focused on VR, AR mediums. So I learned a lot from my colleagues and starting from there and now I had a chance to do this film.
[00:03:19.937] Jenny Guo: My background actually is in film industry and also in auction world. That's why I have this great opportunity to have access to lots of amazing contemporary artists. So I have produced VR films and also this is actually my fourth collaboration with contemporary artists since last year trying to really make the art world to really take VR as a new medium, like a new canvas for artists to create.
[00:03:47.321] Kent Bye: And you mentioned that this is actually the first contemporary art piece from China that's there at Sundance.
[00:03:51.853] Jenny Guo: Actually, to go into Sundance, because traditionally, even Sundance take on experimental films or documentary, I think this time for Curator Sherry really take a risk and really believe in us in terms for this type of work would also be accept for, you know, as a big festival like Sundance. So traditionally, a work like this usually goes through a gallery or museum route. So we're very happy to make VR arts more accessible to a general public through festival.
[00:04:22.785] Kent Bye: Yeah, so in this piece, it's an installation piece. It's got two chairs. They look like lazy boys, but they have like D-Bach haptic integrations in there. It's about 10 minutes long. And as you're waiting, you have like a video art installation piece that's playing on two screens. And so really nice throughput where you can come in and watch the video, get a little bit of the onboarding and context and wait for the people to finish their experience and then go into this. What I think of is like this haptic ride. that has a lot of the haptic integrations tied into the experience itself. So maybe you could give a bit more context as to this project and what you were trying to do with it.
[00:04:58.064] Xin Liu: For this project, it is really a three-part work. The center of it is the performance in outer space. So the story is a wisdom tooth that was sent to space and came back. And that was actually deployed and happened last year on May 2nd. So that journey is really the performance and the center of everything else. And then the two channel video kind of represent the work in a way from a mix of the fantasy and mission that using footages of the actual mission launch and footages of my performances underwater and in the desert in Texas. That gives the audience the access to the performance as if from my view. But for the virtual reality part, I think the audience really could experience the journey firsthand as a tooth. And you have this journey firsthand. It is very interesting that as a tooth, it is becoming another character that is in between me and the audience, that the audience is embodied in. The audience could understand who I am through the piece as if they are inside my own mind, because the tooth was inside my own body also. And then later on, when the journey begins and to actually go to space, I think it becomes another layer that the audience is able to project themselves and thinking about what that journey means to them. And that transition for me is very interesting.
[00:06:36.674] Kent Bye: So you're really taking this journey of the tooth into space from all these variety of different perspectives and having the 2D video and onboarding, you have the aspect of actually having VR piece. What is the significance of the tooth? What's the tooth mean to you and why send it out into space?
[00:06:53.343] Xin Liu: Normally, I always explain it that when a kid loses his teeth in China, there's a saying that if it's a top tooth, you bury it under the ground, and if it's a bottom tooth, you toss it up high to the ceiling. And that is a bottom wisdom tooth of mine. And that's like a very, for me, that makes sense. But if we go broader in relationship to the context with outer space, this work is really about the idea of leaving and coming back and detachment. That's why it's called Living Distance. For me, like a voyager leaving the earth, a person leaving their hometown, and a twos leaving me is very similar.
[00:07:35.040] Kent Bye: So maybe you could expand a bit on your role on this piece and you know where you kind of came on to this as working on it.
[00:07:41.204] Jenny Guo: So we actually met at Sundance about four years ago and I think she just started off doing her art practice and we have a very long conversation because most of Xin's works is very high conceptual type of work and I feel like for VR we shouldn't always just focus on the tech but really should think about why we're even doing it in virtuality For her work, at the beginning, the launch, everything, and about two's going to space, and the two channel videos, there's still a sense of a distance with the audience, but I think for VR, it really makes the work a little bit more grounded and more personal. I think this way VR really gave a lot. Adding an additional layer, emotional layer to the audience because the sound and the haptic, the embodiment make them feel like they're in her world also. They can almost like a dream like in their own world can relate to that kind of detachment. So actually there are some people come to see it, they feel very touched in the end and there's a guy who actually lost all his teeth. And when he watched it, he cried because he only had one tooth left. So you see different type of reaction, which is fascinating. And when people take off the headset, they don't think about, oh, this is VR. They think about, wow, I had this journey, this mission, this fantasy. So I think it's really amazing how VR could trigger in depth. So we actually started to say, collaborate, like, we started to talk like a year and a half ago, how potentially can we convert this into VR. She hasn't do the launching part, anything yet. But later on, we got into the Sundance New Frontier Lab. We actually, during the lab time, we wrote lots of writing materials on the tooth. So I think for the creative writing, we started to feel like the tooth, It's very personal, very tiny, but go on this journey, something quite interesting. So it all started from there. Then later on, we started to think what type of technology we could choose, right? So my company, we do most multiplayer now. Then eventually, because the character is a tooth, the whole experience almost quite passive. Then we started thinking about maybe it should be a more passive experience rather than Let's go for multiplayer. Let's go for free roam. So that's why it comes to the haptic motion. Then we decide, oh, the tooth is living in the darkness, right? So hearing sound, all that. So sound might be very important. And even before the launch, it was in the payload in the darkness. So what's the tooth going to feel like with all these sounds around it? So all this creativity happens along the way.
[00:10:33.458] Kent Bye: Well, I had the experience of watching the video installation and seeing people there, but I was really focused on the video installation. I wasn't watching people, and so I was really pleasantly surprised to feel how immersive it was from the haptics and moving around. Like, it's very interesting to have people focus on the video and watch that and not really notice, like, the subtle movements. And some haptic chairs are moving quite a lot, you can tell, but this was so subtle that just visually I couldn't tell that there was anything going on. It just looked like a comfortable chair. But you are using some type of integration with D-Box and I've never seen a chair like this from D-Box. Most of the chairs I've seen have been like in movie theaters. And so maybe you could expand a bit on your collaboration with D-Box and being able to create this whole embodied integration of immersive story.
[00:11:17.370] Xin Liu: So I have done embodied experiences through VR using haptics, sand, wind, temperature, heat, like this kind of elements from four years ago. And then later, when we decided on this project, that the journey of being out there, the detachment, the idea itself is really coming from when I tried my first parabolic flight. The moment I was witless, I felt more like detached, something leaving me rather than I'm flying. It's very different. So that experience is something we are trying to convey. And then working with Dbox is amazing because I think they even though they normally work with movie theater, it's more like intense, you know, like you said, a lot of sensations through into the audience. They kind of trusted us in a way that the more gentle, perceptual approach, which is something that I think they realizing with art piece, they can push that forward more because our experience is not like a racing car or like that. We do have a launch sequence that that covered, But then I think that the magic moment in this work is really when you are floating. And that floating experience, I do think, is because I have that previous background actually being in witnesses before, so we were able to translate it. And then the way we did it is that we kind of do the visual and the sound first, and then we give a versions to D-Box, so they'd make a haptic draft, basically. It's almost another language, I think, the haptic experience. And that's what their company is really good at. And then once they have the draft, we have another engineer, Gershon DuBlanc, also from my studio. We collaborate a lot on haptic experiences. So he went there and we actually integrate on set. again, to turn down lots of more dramatic changes. Because in a way, we do believe that all your senses work together. You don't need one thing to overwhelm the audience. The best perceptual experience is when the audience actually fill in the last 20%. And that's why you see our experience doesn't seem to have a lot of movement going on visually, but I'm pretty sure everybody in the experience was really feeling like they're floating.
[00:13:41.220] Kent Bye: Yeah, it was really quite impressive and it seemed to also have a little bit of pitch or moving back and forth. Is it also moving like side to side in that way?
[00:13:47.707] Xin Liu: It is moving side to side, but very gently because you don't really need that much to trick the human brain because we have so much imagination to fill in already. And the fill in part is what makes it real.
[00:14:00.773] Kent Bye: Yeah, because you're seeing all the visual feedback of that, and your visual senses can dominate. But I think it was very effective. And like I said, I was really quite shocked when I was in there, because I was like, I'd missed it. I missed seeing it. And so it was just really subtle. But I felt like it was very immersive in a way that it's probably one of the best immersive integrations that I've seen in terms of a haptic ride.
[00:14:19.639] Xin Liu: Thank you. Thank you very much. I'll deliver the message to the team. They'll be very happy.
[00:14:25.928] Jenny Guo: It's actually quite interesting, the collaboration with Dbox. Actually, this conversation started a year ago when I started to think about maybe I should collaborate more with new media artists rather than filmmakers. Because for new media artists like Xin, they are very innovative. and they're able to think very big and outside the box. Traditionally, I work with filmmakers, more story-driven, rather than things about body, sensory, all that. So for Nubian artists, it's a little bit radical for me. Also, they're a little bit more avant-garde. to really even to push. So for this piece actually we use different type of technology. So I feel like working with art industry is actually really beneficial for the tech industry because now for instance a company like Dbox they have a new genre of content they could create rather than before was more about for the cinema very big explosion going on. Most of the content you see, I think this is also the first time our piece using the haptic technology to emulate the zero-g experiences. So I think that kind of collaboration is really necessary, and people like us in the industry really need to push it. Of course, for the distribution for this piece, I think it's amazing that festivals are taking us on this journey, and we also got in other festivals. So this piece, not only for audiences, not only they can see at museums or galleries, they actually can reach out to a lot more people, even though the industry is quite small. If you go to Sundance, like Tribeca or SouthSpy, lots of people can see, oh, you can actually doing the motion chair like this way, where you actually can use sound this way, can inspire more people. Very excited for this collaboration to really work out, yeah.
[00:16:14.731] Kent Bye: And is this a new chair from Dbox, or?
[00:16:16.867] Jenny Guo: Yeah, it's actually their old recliner chair.
[00:16:19.468] Kent Bye: So they were 13 years old?
[00:16:20.568] Jenny Guo: The chair, for D-Bot, they don't really make the chair. So it's more about the software and encoding part they do. But the chair is actually quite old for their cinema.
[00:16:31.143] Kent Bye: So there's the haptic actual mechanics of what's buzzing and that technology is just put into like a modern La-Z-Boy?
[00:16:37.006] Jenny Guo: You could put in other type of chair. So in terms for other presentation, you can change how the chair look. But the technology and the coding and the software will be something different.
[00:16:49.292] Kent Bye: Well, as an artist who has a background in mechanical engineering, I can see all of the tools, processing that was a part of creating this whole casing to be sent up in space. And so it sounds like you actually sent the tooth up in space. And so maybe talk about that side in terms of an artist creating a whole casing and sending a tooth up into space.
[00:17:07.455] Xin Liu: Yeah, so for me, because I was trained in mechanical engineering, it feels very much like robotics to me is like clay to a sculpture person. So it's more like the medium I use, and I'm very familiar with it. And I love metal. Aluminum better than steel is like the nerd part of it. I quite enjoy it, just the pure manufacturing process, working with metal. And then, of course, in the end, this piece, and when people come into it, and then they actually have a behind-the-scenes video, there are questions around what is the success of this piece. Engineering perspective, it is about the launch, right? It has to perform in the way that is accurate. But from art perspective, it is whatever the reality is. There's no failure. And that's the most interesting part for me, the difference between a story and the goal we have in the arts and engineering and how those two things balance. Because in this entire launch, at the beginning I was very, very nervous because I want to make sure it 100% works. But then later on, of course, I still work extremely hard to make sure that will happen. But then somehow for me, the whole journey become the piece rather than the robot or like the exact movements I was designing it for. because I think no matter what the calculation or simulation you have, the outcome is just life gives to you and that becomes something more ambiguous and I think that's where the art and expression and sharing really arrives because if this work is really just about how technically I did everything, I only need to write a paper. I don't think the audience need to know the details that much but The idea of like, I want to do this thing, kind of crazy and banal, but grand, small, big, everything at the same time. It's giving a lot of access for the audience to connect with it.
[00:19:23.532] Kent Bye: Well, there's certainly a whole film festival circuit with Sundance and South by Southwest, Tribeca, Venice. So there's different curators who are becoming these cultural hotspots to then have other curators come there and be able to take it back into either art galleries or location-based entertainment. So what's the plan for Living Distance? What happens after this?
[00:19:43.698] Jenny Guo: So we actually designed two routes. One is actually the faster route in terms of we do want to show around, especially we want people to see. Actually, like even lots of curators who saw the piece gave us comments on they have never seen something like that. Like you said, the integration and everything. So I think it's quite a unique piece to go through a festival route to give people some ideas. You could do things like this or something along the line. So one thing we plan is to go through more festivals, but the other part of it actually pushing the the future of digital collecting, of collecting virtuality or XR arts for future. If eventually we're living in a metaverse, I think how work being consumed is not going to be hanging on your wall. I might invite you to my work in VR. So that's all those new ideas I'm trying to push for a very quite traditional industry like art industry. So last year actually I shared at Christie why the next generation collectors. might be coming from tech world, rather than the older generation collector, usually will collect painting, and they don't even care that much about video art. Usually only institution, but I think for VR, you're going to see this new wave of galleries and museums. For instance, this piece also going to show in Beijing at the new X Museum. It's by a very young collector and curator. So there's a lot of new distribution channel coming out. and how they collect work, how they distribute work. So I think for this piece, it's a very good experiment to even to test how our industry sees it and how film industry or entertainment or the culture industry, that type of route can consume the work.
[00:21:39.663] Kent Bye: Well, I had a chance to see this piece during the press preview, which had a bit of a rush to be able to try to see everything. You know, the clock was ticking and I tried to see all the stuff. And so I ended up only seeing maybe about half of the video installation. And the interesting thing about the video installation is that when you start to watch it, you can pick up at any point of it. So it was like maybe I don't know what point it started, but maybe I think it restarted and then started again. But then when I watched the VR experience, I felt like there was a little bit of a disconnect between not having seen the full video installation and not knowing what happened. And so just wondering if you could lay out the story progression of is everything shown in the video and then also shown within the immersive VR piece, everything that happens in the immersive perspective.
[00:22:20.979] Xin Liu: I think we actually thought a lot about this in terms of exhibition and what is a user experience, the audience experience. And to me, I feel either you see the VR or see the video or see the video or see the VR would provide a very different experience, but they both are valid and interesting. If you just go into the VR with only one sentence of this is a story of the two sending to space, you might feel like it's very abstract, it is experimental, it's dreamlike, but it's a good dream. I believe you don't need to know much more than that to enjoy the work. But then if after that VR experience and you watch the video, you'll be like, oh my god, that was real. And that's an interesting surprise. Or you saw this whole journey through the video, you feel like something bizarrely interesting is happening there. And then you also now have another access to it to know even more. So I think it's really different for the audience. I really don't have a preference. I think both of them would be pleasant and interesting.
[00:23:25.565] Kent Bye: Maybe you could each give me a bit of an update as to what's happening with virtual reality in China.
[00:23:31.006] Jenny Guo: So I think VR is moving very quickly. You do see more and more, especially for art industry, taking VR as a new type of medium, a new canvas for artists. So I think that's a really good thing. Because I think for Chinese audiences, they right now have this huge appetite actually to consume art. So actually you see the malls, even Hong Kong Art Basel last year, tons of people who are not from the industry coming to see the exhibit. So in that way I do see the power of VR combining with the art world, the great artists, the emerging artists. the new generation artists who are using science as a new type of craft. I think we're going to see more of artists like this coming out using VR, but you do also see, how I say, still gaming is a big thing. And in China, I don't see the ecosystem is being built. That's why I'm kind of moving towards the art industry, because most of the new media artists have an international background, and they're willing to use the type of technology to create. But even for film industry, it's still quite conservative. Even the big studios, they're very hesitant to even try VR. So I think it's more about that, how we're going to eventually have the ecosystem. But for distribution-wise, definitely I do see Asia right now is still very good for tons of people, large population, locations, malls, hotels, all these real estate properties are all looking into content. So I think there is some business opportunity there to combine with artwork, content, yeah.
[00:25:21.390] Xin Liu: I think in a way for art world VR is a new thing and that's an industry decision and lots of people are working on it. But I'm pretty excited because in China everything grows so fast and technology is a big topic for the nation and individuals to feel like they could have a new possibility, like technology and science is really kind of the growth for economics and the idea of the future in many ways. So whenever cultural producers are dealing with new type of technologies, it actually not only challenging the medium or challenging the cultural industry itself, It also actually brought in general publics who have not really interested in maybe arts that much yet, but are interested in technology overall. So they will be like, oh, okay, like, I'm into rockets or computer and this artist normally who only do painting is doing something with something I'm familiar with. So it's actually introducing new group of audiences into galleries and museums and exhibitions. So in many way I think this branching and bridging is really beneficial for both sides. Of course there's also challenge around that is the I do feel as an artist, it's a large consumption and appetite from the audience and the museum. Sometimes it's a bit too much that I feel I have to make a new work every other month. So especially for young people, it could be a little bit exhausting. But it's a good kind of exhaust, yeah.
[00:27:01.843] Kent Bye: And so for you, what type of experiences do you want to have in VR?
[00:27:07.097] Jenny Guo: I actually want to have more of social experiences because I lately done lots of research on how to potentially create an alternative reality for people to actually connect rather than disconnect. Because I feel like when you're able to provide a certain type of environment, I think this is coming from, I've done lots of drama therapy in the past in terms how we create engagement between people, create a safe environment for people to actually, they're able to connect more. For instance, like Disneyland, why people all have generally very good memories there is because Disney is able to provide this really fantasy world for families, for friends, for lovers to connect and they're sharing their memory and co-creating memories. So what we have in our brain is not Disneyland, it's the memory we had within that space. So for VR I think my goal and mission is really to be able to create that kind of environment, that kind of alternative reality, for people to actually bond more, rather than just say, oh, VR right now, everyone's going to feel isolated. So I'm actually having an art show in Shanghai this year about food as a medium. So it's an immersive art show combining immersive theater and My goal is not actually just people come and see an installation or that they're trying. It's more, can I create an environment, something that's far from their reality? And they're able to explore themselves, to be curious about their spouse. So we're going to have those little tests or things like that. So I think for me, VR eventually will be this social hub. for people to re-explore who they actually are and who they actually want in some way. So I think this is a far way to go, but I'm very confident and hopeful. I think for certain people, VR might be isolating. But for me, I think it's going to bring a lot more from people, especially when we create the environment right.
[00:29:21.571] Kent Bye: So what about you? What do you want to experience in VR?
[00:29:25.135] Xin Liu: I want to see pieces that is really about something the creator wants to tell as a story, less about demonstrating what they can do. because I feel like technology is very interesting and VR, because of markets, because of attention, because of the press and media, it's very easy to be drawn to want to make a piece that is about something exciting and new for the exciting and new sake of it. I really want to see more creators that are actually first of all themselves enjoying the medium because I think you can tell from the piece sometimes like how much the creator themselves even want to spend the time in it probably. That's the first thing. Maybe it's a very artist approach to looking at. Because sometimes I feel like you can just see the pleasure of someone drawing in their painting. So I want to see the same thing in the VR by the directors. And second of all, I feel like it will be very interesting to look at works that are out of, again, like topics, but more personal, but not personal for personal as like a gimmicky almost in a way like a marketing title to be personal but like a bit more like what you dreamed about. So maybe I just want to see more of the creators in AR pieces in general. Like, that's always my taste in all mediums of art making, like films. I always say, like, love films, like the directors, love stories inside of it. I think that's something really needs the creators to feel confident about the medium in order to put themselves in it. Now, I think we are still going through the process trying to establish itself to be trusted by the creators.
[00:31:29.596] Kent Bye: Cool. And finally, what do you each think is the ultimate potential of immersive art and immersive storytelling, and what it might be able to enable?
[00:31:39.639] Jenny Guo: I think it enables people's imagination, which is really great. I think for VR, quite unique about it is You don't need to be a time-based story or very linear. You could be in someone's consciousness. I think that really helps us to understand each other as a human. Like still so far my favorite piece is like Notes on Blindness. I think That's like a long time ago, but always triggered me to think about, wow, that's how blind people using sound to visualize their world. I think it's amazing to really get me to insert someone's head inside someone's world. Also, you know, even for the simple version of 360 videos, I was filming the jungle about rain forest protection. it does, people who watch it in the city, they do have a different type of perspective. So I think the immersive art, since it's more abstract, more about concept, big concept, it really helps us to unleash the audience's imagination. And I think the medium will be able to trust the audience more, and the audience will trust the medium more. So it's kind of like a holding hands type of experience. Yeah, so I hope really our industry are really pushing because they do need to figure out the distribution in terms for the eventual where this piece is actually going. So pushing that is not really easy to make the market, our market, to accept it. But we do see these changes like, for instance, Christie's trying to auction this new Mixed Realities piece in UK now. So you do see a little bit industry people are really trying to define we are the new type of medium for art, yeah.
[00:33:33.125] Xin Liu: I think from creator perspective, this is really kind of the future. Not because everyone says that, but from my experience of thinking about art history, people start with like painting, and then we go with like sculpture, and like architecture, and later on when technology kicks in, we have films. You can see that through all those processes, the creators start to gain more and more control of the audience. Like with the painting, you have probably a flick second, and they can stare or not stare. It can walk away. They cannot engage. And with movie, of course they can also look away, but relatively you do own them much more. You own them much longer duration. There's also sound there. It's like you're grabbing someone with much stronger forces and power. And virtuality is almost like the next level. Not only you have a dynamic painting basically in front of someone and a sound, you literally give them the whole world. You can occupy someone's world for like five, six, ten minutes. That's a lot of control and power on someone else. So I think it definitely will give the creator a lot more to be able to either manipulate or deliver. That's why often lawyers say, why is it so easy to cry in VR? Because the whole world is making you to do it. It's always like, I was joking, it's almost like you're watching a film on an airplane. It's very easy to cry. It's because of the air pressure, the confinement. So the more control you have over the audience, the more impact you have on them. So that's a good thing, maybe, for the creator, but also brought in a lot of question about responsibility. And we can see that in game industry, because the more interaction we have with the audience, that also means you have more control of their even body movements and action decision making. So while we have such immersive media that you can literally take over someone for like an entire time, I think the question is how you can really do something, make it worthwhile for the audience to be in there for you. Yeah.
[00:35:52.940] Kent Bye: Is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the immersive community?
[00:35:57.924] Xin Liu: I think for me, because I didn't really come from a purely VR world, it's a really fascinating community. It's a very tight community. It turns out everyone kind of knows each other, have worked together. I do have a lot of hope for this medium to flourish and becoming something really, really fascinating and changing the world. And everyone in the community is a pioneer. And I think the responsibility Because I think everyone is going to do a good job just realizing that mission together. But I think along with, I think, lots of questions like, are we including other communities to be part of this? And how are we going to do this? Because technology naturally gives some limits and restrictions of access. So how could we develop it and push it forward while making it accessible for the other people at the same time?
[00:36:50.850] Jenny Guo: Still I think right now industry we can see this year actually we do have amazing piece but I have to say throughout the four and a half years me being in VR we do have less resources and limited funding. to create great work. I'm not saying it's a good thing or a bad thing because for this piece actually even though we got some support it's very limited in terms of resources but we're still able to push all the boundaries to create something. So actually you don't need a lot to create, but we still need help from the tech industry. So I talked to hardware companies about those amazing emerging artists coming out, but I think for strategically, hardware company are betting on more established artists to work on things. So you see big name dropping, of course, for PR effect. But in order to really push the medium to have something like, let's say, Living Distance, trying something new to innovate, not just the medium, but using different type of technology, inviting other people from other communities. We do really need those big players to really care a lot more. For instance, Facebook, we talked once, they would never invest in arts. But I kind of feel they should in terms for this really helps to innovate and testing with their new type of technology, their cameras, their everything. So I think for our industry, we have an amazing group of talents because their background are multidisciplined. They might be painters, sculptors, new media artists, graphic designers, gamers even. These people are super innovative and when they give them a certain piece of tool, they're able to give you so much more because traditionally our industry is unlike film industry. You have a huge crew to work on something. You have a very small team and usually very dominated by one particular artist. to do such and such, but I do see amazing outcome out of it. And even besides seeing like for other artists, contemporary artists I'm working with, they're really pushing the tech through, even though they're not necessarily technical, but they are pushing tech and able to think very big. So I really think On industry levels, distributors or even hardware companies should really take a look into those type of quite niche avant-garde. Think about New French Wave. That's sort of really pushed the film industry to the next level. So I think VR right now really needs that. Yeah.
[00:39:37.411] Kent Bye: Awesome, great. Well, I just wanted to thank each of you for joining me today on the podcast, so thank you.
[00:39:40.973] Xin Liu: Thank you so much. I'll see you around. Yeah, have a fine Sundance.
[00:39:45.516] Jenny Guo: Come to see Living Distance.
[00:39:47.978] Kent Bye: So that was Shen Liu, the artist and director on Living Distance, as well as Jenny Guo. She's the executive producer on Living Distance. So I have a number of different takeaways about this interview is that, first of all, Well, like I said at the top of this intro, this is probably one of the best integrations that I've seen with the Debox technologies. Putting it in the chair and having you move around, especially as you go into the space, really, really good integration between the haptics and the visuals that you're seeing in this experience. The other thing is that the onboarding, as you're waiting to get into this experience, you're able to watch this 10 minute video and they have the video around the same length as it takes to have someone else go through it. And I was surprised because I was watching the video and not necessarily watching people doing the VR. I was just surprised to see how immersive it was to be in this chair and how much it was moving around from my own perception. But yet when you see them, it doesn't seem like they're moving around like an extraordinary amount. It's hard to describe, but you, are in space and you're moving around, you're kind of floating in space and just the way they're able to subtly do these chair movements and to have the different haptic feedback I think gave it a lot more immersive experience. It's also interesting just to hear a little bit more about China and what's happening in China and Chinese culture. It sounds like things are moving quickly in China, that there's just a big appetite to be able to consume art and get these different types of experiences into the art world. This is, as Jenny said, one of the first experiences from China from contemporary artists to be shown in the Sundance Film Festival. So Jenny's with her production company is really thinking about the different distribution options She's gonna be taking around to different curators, you know play it in more different film festivals But there's new museums that are coming up one is called the new X Museum in Beijing and they have different distribution options that are out there so that's a trend that I've been just saying generally within this film festival scene where there's these a cultural institutions around the world that are starting to show these different types of immersive experiences. And I think from what I've seen, there's a certain set and setting that happens when the museum where people are open-minded and primed to have like this kind of weird experience that maybe is pushing the edges of narrative. This is not like a typical story that you would see, but it feels like more of an immersive ride this particular case. But I could imagine that this is going to be a type of experience that people are going to be willing to go and see at a place like a museum. And, uh, you know, one of the other big things I think that I'm taking away here is just, you know, the director and artist Shen Liu, she has a background in mechanical engineering. And so there's a certain part of really building out both the actual box that they literally set up into space and then the digital recreation that they have within virtual reality. And so. just to think about it from that perspective of mechanical engineering and what type of art you can create as a mechanical engineer, which ends up being these engineering projects that end up getting sent up in space, in this specific case with living distance. So that's all that I have for today, and I just wanted to thank you for listening to the Voices of VR podcast. And if you enjoy the podcast, then please do spread the word, tell your friends, and consider becoming a member of the Patreon. This is a listener-supported podcast, and so I do rely upon donations from listeners like yourself in order to continue to bring you this coverage. So you can become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash Voices of VR. Thanks for listening.
