After suffering a paralyzing viral infection, XR Director Naima Karim started to notice the natural world around her in a more visceral way, She “experienced the monsoon even more intensely than usual: the initial gusts of wind, the rapidly darkening sky, the oppressive humidity and finally the downpour of rain, which washes everything clean and leaves behind a fresh scent.” A painter by trade, she took up virtual reality painting with Open Brush, and created a romantic and poetic sim tribute to Monsoons with a multi-sensory piece called “The Anticipation of Rain.”
I had a chance to briefly catch up with Karim at IDFA DocLab 2022 to hear more about her journey into VR & immersive storytelling. I also wanted to learn a bit more about what’s happening with VR in Saudi Arabia, as she was one of five selected projects out of 231 in a competition there. Here’s the press release announcement about it: “The King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture (Ithra) is excited to present five projects under its inaugural Creative Solutions initiative launched under the theme “Digital Immersive Content Creation”. The program is designed to boost Saudi Arabia’s creative economy by empowering digital content creation in immersive technologies, and drew 231 applications.”
Music: Fatality
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. It's a podcast that looks at the structures and forms of immersive storytelling and the future of spatial computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash Voices of VR. So in today's episode, I'm covering a piece called The Anticipation of Rain by Naima Karim, which she's from Bangladesh and the Netherlands and is currently based in Saudi Arabia. The Anticipation Rain is about the monsoon rains that come on and just the poetic beauty that she finds in that. She was able to take virtual reality and transport you into the changing ecosystem as it starts to move into the monsoon and in the middle and then after. As you're in the midst of going through this still life that's subtly animated, you're getting these little sticks that have different smells as well. It's a multi-sensory experience that's trying to transport you. Naeem is telling the story of her experience of being paralyzed and then all the different aspects of her connecting to nature and finding ways of using the virtually immediate technologies to tell this deeper story. She also talks about some of the different funding that she got from Saudi Arabia in terms of this deeper initiative that they have as a part of the inaugural Creative Solutions Initiative that was launched under the theme of the digital immersive content creation. And so she was one of five of 231 applications That made it to the finals and then was selected here for IFA DocLab to show here at the festival. So that's what we're coming on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Naima happened on Tuesday, November 15th, 2022 at the IFA DocLab in Amsterdam, Netherlands. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:01:55.486] Naima Karim: My name is Naima Karim. I am from Bangladesh and the Netherlands, and I am a fine artist. I've created the Anticipation of Rain, the VR multisensory experience.
[00:02:08.710] Kent Bye: Maybe you could give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into making these types of immersive experiences.
[00:02:15.706] Naima Karim: I did a bachelor degree in fine arts, so I practice 2D paintings on canvases. So this is the first VR project that I came into. It is because I was thinking to immerse my audience more into the experience of monsoon rain. So the monsoon rain is something I wanted to, I mean I paint rain, I am a painter of the sky, I paint clouds, birds, everything about sky. But then I wanted to make something that is about monsoon rain. It's my childhood memory about monsoon rain experience and then I realized it is more effective when people can immerse into the experience. And one of the very important thing was that I was completely paralyzed when I was 23. And then from there to come back and walk again, it took me a long time. Because after five months I could only move my two fingers a little bit. So then I realized that the monsoon rain is changing due to climate change. It is not the same as my childhood memory. It's unpredictable, it's erratic, but it is my really exciting and romantic experience that monsoon rain can bring because it's not only raining, it's the thunder, it's the clouds that goes very dark and This is something that is very important for my country and the whole world, but then it changed and unpredictable. So with my message of paralysis, I am trying to connect people with the VR experience that look, it's a very dark moment at the moment with the climate change, but then eventually the sun shines again and you need to see the positive side that the beauty is still around you. You just need to take care of this.
[00:04:13.615] Kent Bye: Yeah, and so maybe you could talk a bit about some of your background that you're bringing in, like your training or design disciplines that you're kind of fusing together, and also your journey into VR and what made you look to the VR medium to start to express some of these experiences that you've had.
[00:04:30.598] Naima Karim: So because I am a 2D artist, I had no technical background. I suddenly saw there was an open call that is supporting ideas with technology, but you don't have to have any technical background. So my background is fine art. As a 2D artist, I have a certain style of painting with long brushstrokes. So I thought, OK, I will combine this into VR, but then I don't have any idea how to create this. So I got 12 masterclasses where I was introduced to VR, XR, AR, those kind of things. And we had mentors and trainer. So I get to get my idea slowly, slowly into this VR project where I also wanted to have the scents included. So my project is in XR. And before that, I had no idea about what VR can do, even if you've never tried a VR headset or an experience. So these 12 masterclasses are my only training that I received. And after that, they're... Where were the masterclasses at? The masterclasses were given by a program in Saudi Arabia, where I'm currently living. It's from King Abdul Aziz Center for World Culture, in short, ITRA. They have a program called Creative Solutions Program, where they selected 30 projects initially. And then from the 30 projects, they gave masterclasses. And from that, I was one of the five selected to be funded. And when I got selected, they gave me further training and helped me to get the team built. And this is how I took three months, around three months, to develop the project that you can see here at IDFA Festival.
[00:06:26.378] Kent Bye: Okay, and so what's the program that you're using to paint?
[00:06:29.347] Naima Karim: So I used Open Brush, Tilt Brush, because I didn't have the training of a 3D artist, so I had to learn it in two weeks. There was a deadline, a timeline, and then I have to figure out how to transform my 2D style into a 3D style. So initially it was not looking good but then I worked hard to have the same style but then make it in a 3D. So it was open brush but then there was a custom made texture to match with my 2D painting style.
[00:07:07.575] Kent Bye: Okay, so because it's Open Brush you're able to import a custom texture into the program. Was there any animation to it? I'm trying to remember if there was movement. Did you export it and put it into Unity or is everything just built into Open Brush and export and using shaders and textures?
[00:07:24.484] Naima Karim: It was exported, but the Open Brush team helped also my developer to create this extra texture that was not in the usual tool. And then the developer brought each painting in Unity and then overlapped painting over painting to have the transformation from bright environment to dark. And I was just painting 2D, I mean not 3D, but no movement. And then he added waves, movement, the birds. So I've painted like birds in a thousand position, a lot of wings in one position, and then he filled it up. He created, his name is Richard Tongaman, and he actually created everything in Unity.
[00:08:12.348] Kent Bye: And when I was experiencing this piece, it was being delivered through a PC VR with a wired VR headset. And then as I was going through it, there is the docent who was handing me these sticks that had smell on it. And so they were instructing me to hold it up to my nose. And I think there was two different smells that I did when I did it. And so maybe you could talk about the process of creating these smells and what the smells were. How do you describe them and the contrast between the two smells?
[00:08:38.970] Naima Karim: So I was introduced to a perfumer by Grace Boyle. She also does perfumes for We Live in an Ocean of Air, those kind of installations. So I was looking for someone who could do something from my childhood memory of monsoon rain. She introduced me to Andreas Wilhelm. He's a Swiss perfumer so I went to him in his lab and he gave me a lot of little little bottles and told me that you need to figure it out which can be a scent for humidity and what can be rain because I have no idea I've never been to a monsoon rain so then I was very nervous I was like really I thought it was your job and and I felt like if I smell all those little bottles I would be smell-deaf But actually it worked really. I tried to get the sea smell, the earthy smell, the tree smell, the seaweed kind of smell. and I made those few for humidity and then a little bit of sweeter scent when the water mixes with the soil and Andreas helped me to figure it out because he knows of course what to mix and he said maybe it should be this and that then we discussed it together and then finally he mixed it for me and it was few hours that I already had those two bottle of scents with me humidity and rain It was really exciting to see people associate with those smells and they say, yeah, I get this. I really get this. It's my memory from London. It's my memory from Philippines or from US. It was really interesting.
[00:10:27.967] Kent Bye: Yeah, I thought it was really powerful in the sense that almost overwhelming in some ways because it becomes so dominant to tying into my own memories of those smells and that I'm immersed in this space and it made me feel more immersed into the embodied place of that place but then I also found myself There was a narration that was happening that was almost like an overwhelm of all this other sensory experience that I was taking in that I had a little bit harder time tracking all the different things that were being narrated. But I got the sense that it was talking about your own experiences about the monsoons. But maybe you could quickly recap what you were trying to communicate in the narration of the piece.
[00:11:03.552] Naima Karim: So the narration is my very personal story where I was paralyzed and then came back from a very depressed time to a positive person and why I'm relating monsoon with this because monsoon has the same thing. I had a happy life and then within a day I was like completely out of my control. I couldn't move anything. So when you are in a dark storm and you see everything is so destructive, you're so scared to move or do anything. And then I came back from that hard time. And the monsoon also, when the storm finishes, it's also brighter and beautiful and the birds come back, cheers you up and you kind of survive. So my connection with this is that like the climate change situation is now and I feel like it is a situation where we don't have control over it but then we still have to think positive and try to take care of the world.
[00:12:10.290] Kent Bye: Yeah, I definitely have a lot of memories of being in the environmental context and I really appreciated the ways in which you were talking about your memories of the monsoons and how I was able to see that reflected in the environmental context. And I think sometimes when I see a piece, my memory ends up being like the visual representation of stuff. And so did you think about including yourself as an avatar representation or the before and after? Because I don't see a virtual representation of you in the piece. So I don't know if that was a consideration if you thought about adding yourself within the context of this world.
[00:12:44.478] Naima Karim: So initially I even didn't want to narrate it because as an artist I felt like I should give some space to the audience to fill up the blanks. I don't want to tell them everything what to do but then my team recommended that I should tell my story because it's very inspiring and people always get inspired by a human version of the experience than only watching it. So then I added my narration but then I didn't want to be there because I felt like people should again have some part where they connect themselves with their memory, with their own experience, and they play with their imagination. So I just didn't want to fill up all the blanks.
[00:13:28.519] Kent Bye: Yeah, and a big part of this piece is going into your experience of the monsoon, and a big part of it is describing it and having people experience different parts, but for people who haven't seen the experience or who haven't experienced the monsoons, like I live in the United States, I've never been through a monsoon, so what is that experience like and why do you have this positive nostalgia around it?
[00:13:48.100] Naima Karim: For me, Monsoon Rain is very romantic, exciting, and it's dramatic. It's like you're in the middle of a theater going on. It's because the sound is coming from every direction. Suddenly you see lightning, and then you hear the thunder from the back, from the side, from everywhere. And it's very powerful. It's the scary moment. It's like when you first fall in love. You feel butterfly in your stomach. You feel very scared, but you like it. So the feeling about monsoon rain is like this to me. It's like scary, damaging, but somehow it triggers you to experience the excitement. So that is what I try to explain.
[00:14:31.337] Kent Bye: And as you describe that, that seems to be a very physical and visceral metaphor for what you also were going through. So when was the moment that you realized that that experience of monsoon was connected to your own personal experience of paralysis?
[00:14:47.514] Naima Karim: Well, in this case, I have to say that my observation is more about sky, clouds, rain, sunny day, sunshine, sunrise. This is what I paint. So my observation is how monsoon rain is so related to my personal story. I felt like it's totally connecting me with the experience because I became a very positive person. And monsoon is something important for our farmers, for our land, because a farmer predicts when the rain is going to happen. And then they sow. They know that, OK, in these days it's going to rain. So they kind of plan everything. And people like to plan their life. It doesn't happen at the end, but then we always try to make plan and we dream. So this is how I connect my personal story with the monsoon rain.
[00:15:44.749] Kent Bye: And being here at the DocLab, what have been some of the reactions of people after they go through this multi-sensory experience?
[00:15:52.885] Naima Karim: Well, I've seen people come out and sometimes they cry. Yesterday I saw someone posted in her blog that after the experience she was just biking and she kind of almost fell off from the bike. So, it's very positive and I sometimes just sit here just to see how people are reacting. There was like a father and a son, I think, maybe 14 years old. And then the father asked like, which one should I watch next? How did you like the Anticipation of Rain? And he said it was beautiful. So, I've seen those kind of feedback. It's really what my intention is to inspire people.
[00:16:37.354] Kent Bye: So, what's next for you in this project?
[00:16:41.215] Naima Karim: Well, I'm trying to get funding for the Anticipation of Rain. I pitched yesterday at the forum. It's because my intention was always to give the audience some freedom to walk around in the experience. Because now it's three doff, people are sitting on a chair, but I feel like it's going to be nice if you can walk around a little bit in the forest and you can get some interaction with the birds. The birds symbolize freedom or movement. Movement is very important to me because I missed movement once. So I feel like if people have this kind of movement and can be guided by the birds, and feel it more in their steps would be interesting. So my next intention is to make it a sixth off, but also I'm always going to paint because I'm still a 2D painter. And I have also some ideas, just very young baby, still think about more VR projects.
[00:17:43.140] Kent Bye: Have you continued to paint and open brush?
[00:17:46.902] Naima Karim: I did, because there was another project I received from the same cultural center in Saudi Arabia. They asked me to also showcase something that is about digital well-being. So how people can use digital or technology as a positive or health-wise, like a positive way of not only watching and constantly sitting on a phone, do something creative. So in that case, that time, I did some paintings for them to showcase it at the summit.
[00:18:25.497] Kent Bye: So you mentioned that you're currently living in Saudi Arabia. What's the virtual reality scene like within Saudi Arabia? Because you mentioned that there's some other projects that also was going through the master class and potentially also getting some funding.
[00:18:37.365] Naima Karim: Creative Solutions Program at ITRA, they have four more winners with me, cohorts, and because this is a program, so it's ongoing, so there is always like a second, we were the first year, now there is the second year cohort where 15, I think, AR, VR projects are going for the next iteration, development. I think they will soon have a demo for that. And VR audiences are huge in Saudi Arabia and growing very fast. So Creative Solutions Program is supporting anyone who is interested.
[00:19:15.629] Kent Bye: Awesome. And finally, what do you think the ultimate potential of virtual reality and immersive storytelling might be and what it might be able to enable?
[00:19:25.978] Naima Karim: I think it's a very interesting tool for the new generation. Like me, I'm targeting the new generation because they will be the one who's living in this world and to be inspired. New generation is adopting VR, XR, like openly, and it is to reach them, to send them a message, positive or what's going on in the current situation, and immerse them completely in the experience. It's a great tool. And as an artist, I feel like this is amazing how it works.
[00:20:01.926] Kent Bye: Is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the broader immersive community?
[00:20:08.013] Naima Karim: I would say that I'm amazed with what people are bringing, how creative people are. So this is the first time I'm in IDFA, but I'm trying to experience as much as possible because so many creative people are out there and I think anybody should experience this.
[00:20:27.852] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, definitely take away being transported into this scene as it changes to and from the monsoon, but also the multi-sensory experience that I think is a real interesting addition to the medium. And yeah, it just adds a whole visceral aspect to it. So yeah, thanks for joining me today on the podcast to help break down your journey and your process and the anticipation of the rain. So thank you.
[00:20:52.719] Naima Karim: Thank you so much for your time as well and experiencing my project. Thank you.
[00:20:58.379] Kent Bye: So that was Naima Karim. She's the creator of The Anticipation of Rain and she's from Bangladesh and the Netherlands and currently based in Saudi Arabia. So I have a number of takeaways about this interview is that first of all, well the piece itself gives you this deep sense of environmental presence of being transported into this jungle-like environment that's also kind of on the edge of the ocean and you see the dark skies coming in and it transforms into the monsoons and you hear the rain and You're also handed these sticks, and they're two different sticks at two different moments, and you're smelling it, and it kind of has this earthy-like smell, which, for me, gives this deeper sense of being embedded into these spaces, although it's a far cry from actually being immersed physically into a monsoon and all the different physical experiences of what that would feel like if I was actually there. But there's a narration that's going out through the entirety of the piece, and there are certain aspects that I think I'd have to watch again to be able to really recount all the different beats of the story. I think the visual aspects of all the smell dominated my sensory memory of this piece, and so I had to rely upon a little bit of Naima to recount different aspects of the story as it unfolded. But using the adaptation of Tilt Brush, which is now Open Brush, it's an open source project, I had some changes of some of the different textures to be able to animate it within a Unity project. So yeah, I think the other part that I found interesting in just her story of coming from painting and being able to translate that in her paintbrush style into virtual reality, it's a whole other component. But there's also the component of this collaboration with Saudi Arabia and that there's this whole inaugural creative solutions initiative that had this initial launch into the theme of the digital and immersive content creation, which says it's a program that designed to boost Saudi Arabia's creative economy by empowering digital content creation and immersive technologies. and there's 231 applications, and she was one of the five finalists that showed back in February of 2022 at the King Abdul Aziz Center for World Culture, the ITHRA. So her path into going through all of these different masterclass programs, I wasn't necessarily aware of any of the stuff that was happening in Saudi Arabia. Just after the IFA doc lab, there was the Red Sea Immersive, which I think it's in this second year of the Red Sea Film Festival. Liz Rosenthal was helping to curate again. And actually Naima had her piece that was showing there at the Red Sea Festival there in Saudi Arabia, and she was actually selected to be on the jury. There's a lot of the pieces that were showing there that was also at the Venice Immersive and interviews that I did. And so Second place there at the Red Sea Immersive was Euridice, Descent into Infinity. And first place was from Pedro Jaez, From the Main Square. So it got second place there at Venice and took the top prize there at the Red Sea Immersive. So yeah, it seems like there's more initiative there to bring in more immersive technology and cultural applications within Saudi Arabia. So, that's all I have for today, and I just wanted to thank you for listening to the Voices of VR podcast. And if you enjoyed the podcast, then please do spread the word, tell your friends, and consider becoming a member of the Patreon. This is a less-supported podcast, and I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue to bring you this coverage. So, become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. Thanks for listening.
