I interviewed Oneroom-Babel director Sanghee Lee and screenwriter Seoyeong Jo at Venice Immersive 2023. See more context in the rough transcript below.
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.452] 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 immersive storytelling, experiential design, and the future of spatial computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com. So continuing on my series of looking at different experiences from Venice Immersive 2023, This is episode number 12 out of 35, as well as the fourth of five of the different pieces that are looking at the context of place and home and environment. So this experience is called One Room Babble by director Seng-Hye Lee and the screenwriter Feiyoung Jo. So this experience is based in South Korea. And so there's this phenomena called one room, which is essentially like a studio apartment where everything is just located into one single room. And it's for people who are in the city and they don't have enough money to afford a bigger home. And so Senghi actually has a background in anthropology and wanted to do a bit of like this ethnographic study of looking at these different rooms that are one rooms and was able to do these different scans and do a little bit of poetic abstraction into it. So it's like these low poly meshes that are kind of anonymized in different ways. You can't see any Specifics any in these rooms you just get a bit of a sense of the shape of These different one rooms and as you're walking through these one rooms, it's got this underwater motif And so you're you're walking close to like these jellyfish creatures and as you get within the range of these jellyfish creatures Then you're rewarded with this little block of text that is a bit of like a testimonial or additional context about that room that was based upon a series of different interviews that singing and fo young had done in order to create this piece and So overall, the contextual domain is looking at home and the sense of home, but also money and the constraints around money. So with limited money and constraints, what kind of home can you have in the context of South Korea? And then the center of gravity of presence is very much into this environmental embodied presence. You're in these different spaces that are very abstracted and you are moving your body through these spaces and so you're getting a sense of what it feels like for some of these one rooms and they're also playing with the constraints of the boundary and integrating different aspects of the VR technology and the guardians in order to actually have you push the limits for how you're exploring these different one room spaces and trying to create a connection there between the constraints of the VR space and the constraints of these One Rooms. And then the other is that there's a lot of mental presence in the sense that you're reading a lot of different texts and you're trying to understand the deeper patterns and stories of what the experience is like for these South Koreans who are living in these One Rooms. So that's what we're covering on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Sanghee and Faoyoung happened on Saturday, September 2nd, 2023 at the Venice Immersive in Venice, Italy. So, with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:02:59.395] Sanghee Lee: My name is Sanghee Lee and my artist name is Sanghee and I usually based on the VR and video games. So I really like to use the game mechanics from video game and I apply that mechanics in my project. So this project One Room Barber also kind of VR game. It's between like VR film and VR games because VR has no boundaries, I think. Fortunately, I think VR has no boundaries in general. As a media, I mean. Yeah.
[00:03:36.279] Seoyeong Jo: And my name is Seoyoung Jo, and my artist name is Sunghoon. And I'm the screenwriter of One Room Barber. Originally, I was based on the critics and visual art. And I first met VR as a medium by interacting with her. And I really be immersed in this medium. And I'm very honored to have a chance to participate in this and meet every person who are very enthusiastic about VR.
[00:04:06.435] Kent Bye: Great. Maybe you could give a bit more context as to your background, your educational training, and your journey into VR.
[00:04:14.877] Sanghee Lee: Yeah, so originally I majored in sociology in my university, so I think that's why I have some interest in social issues and it connected to my project One Room Barbell. One Room Barbell is about the people who are living in one room. One room is the type of housing in South Korea, so a place where kitchen, bathroom, living room is just combined into a small one room. So I think that kind of interest is I studied sociology so I think I wanted to address that kind of social issues through my project and actually I started my artist career as a photographer so I think that makes me get huge interest in using LiDAR scanner because many VR project using the LiDAR scanner I think because VR also really have a big relationship with space, but LiDAR scanner also, when you use that, you can get a scan data about space. So I think it's really nice to use that data for VR. And I also think LiDAR scanner is kind of camera because it also use light to capture the space. So I think where should I put that LiDAR scanner and what should I capture with that scanner. So I put that scanner in one room and I think that is the beginning of my project.
[00:05:55.620] Seoyeong Jo: Yes, I have a lot of careers that are not directly related to VR. I studied English literature and I worked as a freelancer, critic for the visual art and activist art and game art. Yes, and it is all about Celtic career. When I first heard about her project, Walloon Babel, what I found interesting was VR seems to be very appropriate medium to address and deal with the sense of space and the emotional side of the space. Like, when people live in a space, The space is not just a physical background, it is cultivated by their characteristics and each resident's habits and sociological factors. And VR seems to be a very appropriate medium to deal with this kind of problems in VR. We don't just read about space or heard about places. We can experience that space, that place. And I thought it should be remarkable point of VR discourse. Yes. Thank you.
[00:07:19.105] Kent Bye: Yeah, so having a background in sociology then you're looking at these collective trends and it feels like with the medium of VR you're able to do a bit of a survey or at least create a space that then has these quotes that maybe you do qualitative research and sociology or anthropology where you're gathering testimony from people about their experiences. And so it feels like in some ways VR is a perfect medium to start to aggregate some of those different quotes in that research. And so I'd love to hear a little bit about the transition from going from sociology and being an artist, but then deciding to use virtual reality to explore this issue.
[00:08:03.314] Sanghee Lee: Yeah, it's kind of strange, you know, to study sociology and, you know, became artist. But I think the first time when I start to make my artwork is when I went to go the exchange study in Finland. I studied there in the art school. So I studied photography and moving image. So at that time I made a few photography work And I really liked it and I wanted to do more. So that's why I start to study in Korean National Arts School. Yeah, I'm not sure it's in the official name in English anyway. So I start to study in K-Arts. and originally I had an interest in video games and I really enjoyed making video games with game engine and I also really fascinated because I think game engine is really well connected with VR because you know VR is virtual reality so you have to make your own virtual world for VR And gaming is the perfect form to make VR, because you can create your own world with your game engine. So I wanted to make the world from using the game engines, and I think that's why I started to make some VR PCs.
[00:09:32.083] Kent Bye: Yeah, and so in this piece you're featuring a lot of different quotes and maybe you could talk about the writing process and how you were doing research and if each of the quotes in each room was one from one person or if it was more of a composite of like combining lots of different perspectives to tell a larger story. So yeah, I'd love to hear about the process of gathering the information and then putting it together.
[00:09:54.628] Seoyeong Jo: Yeah, Sanghee had a lot of interviews, like 23 people who lived in one room for that project. At first it was kind of docu-fiction, like I don't know what the exact word is, like documentary in VR. People can read about people's interviews and their own rooms, they can watch through their own rooms. like that and this kind of interviews became like hot and we wanted to show some particular aspect of living in one room like some kind of melancholy or isolation So her job to collect the interviews and edit it to become appropriate with our intention. Yes, there was kind of that editing process and I know scan data interviews. Yes, and also scan data was also transformed into some kind of fantastical format. We did this because we not only wanted to show it in different way, but also protecting the privacy and people is very sensitive to show their room, because there are a lot of objects and sometimes the room is not perfectly tidy. But they showed us that room and made us to scan that kind of data. So we wanted to show it not so much in direct way. It was more appropriate for our aesthetical intention, but also it was to respect our participants of interviewers, yes.
[00:11:43.046] Kent Bye: Trying to protect their privacy by not showing their rooms in a photorealistic way but have this abstraction that feels like you're walking through a blob of a mesh that gives you a sense of the space but not any of the particulars of any of the objects. So you're just walking through a basic white mesh that you get a sense of this one room and then Yeah, so you're using a LiDAR scanner to capture these, and then are you also editing the mesh to make it a little bit more abstract, or was it more, because I'm sure you're going to get very precise data from a LiDAR, but I couldn't make out any specific objects. It looked like smoothed over in some ways. And so maybe you could talk about your process of trying to capture these rooms with LiDAR, but then create this artistic abstraction on top of that.
[00:12:27.944] Sanghee Lee: Yeah so as Sunghoon told we wanted to show the scan data not in direct way or you know specific appearance we wanted to make it more different because many VR project use LiDAR scan data and you know point cloud data but we use that data in a different way because I think we wanted to find a kind of new graphic look using point cloud data. So we did a lot of tasks to editing the scan data and I'm using some programs to edit data sampling. It means make the data lighter, because the point cloud data is really heavy. So when you put an engine, if you put many point cloud data, it never works. So you have to make it really lighter.
[00:13:22.897] Kent Bye: It's like a lower resolution.
[00:13:24.138] Sanghee Lee: Yeah, right. Kind of not low resolution, because there are just so many points. So if you get rid of some points, it doesn't make the low resolution.
[00:13:35.346] Kent Bye: It's more of a low poly.
[00:13:37.931] Sanghee Lee: data is getting lower so you can use the data freely and there is many ways to edit the scan data but I wanted to make the mesh data and that's why there is a interesting transition between rooms you know the rooms disappear like ghosts and then it appears suddenly the new room appears that can happen because I made the data into mesh data. And then I really tried to in many numbers, you know, the program you can put numbers and if you change the number really slightly, the result is completely different. So I tried a lot and I choose what I want. Between levels that are too specific or too abstract, I found the level what I want. So that's why the graphic comes up.
[00:14:38.530] Kent Bye: In terms of the order of this project, did you start to do the interviews first, or did you do the scans first, or where did you begin with the project?
[00:14:46.525] Sanghee Lee: So the starting is I just ask people, you know, can I visit your house and can I scan your house? So I'm really thankful for the interviewees because the house is a really private place. So to me, I can really understand if they don't want to, you know, invite me because it's a really personal place so you never you know just invite you know stranger you invite your friends or family but thankfully they just willingly invite me and then I you know do lidar scan and then right away I just do some interview I asked question you know about how do you start living in this room and how did you find it or what do you think about your house you know I just ask bunch of questions you know what is the smell in your house you know usually and then they randomly answer and I also asked how much do you pay for rent or what size of your house how big it is what kind of home you want to live you know something like that question and during the interview I really found out there is many interesting answers and you know not every person living in one room you know feel sad or you know or you know desperate yeah some people really happy about you know just move out from family, you know, starting their independent life. But still there is a in common emotion kind of feeling about the one room and I wanted to show it in the project.
[00:16:26.371] Kent Bye: So the whole piece is called One Room Babble and you're exploring this phenomena in South Korea where there's young people who are living in these one-room studio apartments that basically have everything combined into one single room. And so maybe you could talk about whether or not each of you have lived in a one-room or why was this a topic that you wanted to cover and if this is a unique phenomena in South Korea and yeah.
[00:16:52.794] Seoyeong Jo: Woo, hooray. yeah in korea there is two kind of housing problems lastly in seoul like capital city or like big city there are too many people and there is not much space for them to live properly yeah And in the other hand, there are a lot of empty space, empty house, ruined house that people doesn't in rural area. Young people just keep going out and go to the cities to have job opportunity and there is a general problem of low birth, especially in rural place. So we wanted to address this kind of housing problems in many ways. But for the first start, we wanted to address the familial issue for us as a citizen of Seoul and as young people. For the first, we wanted to deal with familial experience. We know it in our own flesh. So the one-room phenomenon, it seems like it is of course about the housing problem, but it also relates with the kind of social perspective about life stage in Korea. People have a strong relation about real estate problem and their life stage. When people are young and when people doesn't have much money, they live in one room, especially in 20s or 30s. And they earn money. And if you earn money, if you save more money, you can go to more big room or two room, plus one room. or they can move into apartment when they get married not always but it kind of get easier because of process of becoming adults by getting more big real estate getting more stable contract about their real estate yes so we wanted to address one room because it signifies the unstable vulnerable stage of life and some people can go through that and some people can move into more bigger house but some people can't do that because they are not much or because they have a lot of debt or just because nowadays in korea there is so high everything is so expensive everything is so expensive and rent is so expensive too So it is not easier to save money and dream about more beautiful life like that. So we wanted one room. And this kind of thing make people think one room as a stage, like phase. You have to go through it. If you stay too much in there, you have some kind of problem like that, yes, in social eyes. Like you are now in 40s and 50s, but you still live in one room and you kind of seem weird like that, yes. So we tried to remark this kind of relationship between social stage and where to live and living place, yes.
[00:20:18.953] Sanghee Lee: So we thought one room embodies the suspension of maturing to many people in Korea. And there is a book we liked when we made the project. This is by Jennifer M. Silva. The name of the book is Coming Up Short. It is about the youth in America. They are Kephalian became adult. You know, becoming adult means, you know, you're getting married, you have own your house, you know, something like that. You know, people just expect that if you are older, you have to do that, you know, something like that. But in America, they just have so much civic, the students run after they graduate the university and just they failing to get good enough job to get on money. So they just, you know, keep the stuck in the specific life stage and they never became others. And I think that kind of emotion is really, in general, everywhere. The youth in any country have it. So I think we wanted to connect that kind of emotion to the space of One Room. So in Korea it's also the same. So the one-room is regarded as a place which you should leave at some point, you know, in order to become a real adult. So you cannot stay forever because one-room is just a temporary living place. So you have to leave at some point, but you cannot. So this is the kind of situation in South Korea. And I think it's not only South Korea. just everywhere and I also have a personal experience living in one room when I was only 20. I also have to move to Seoul because of my education and I started living in one room and so I wanted to share the story not only my personal experience but also you know kind of collective memory in one room yeah.
[00:22:19.092] Kent Bye: And how did you two come to work and collaborate on this project? How did you meet her? What was the catalyst that made you both decide to each work on this project?
[00:22:28.770] Sanghee Lee: Ah, so personally I really liked her article. I wrote some of her projects and she's really good at making stories. And I think I like the way she wrote, you know, when she write the article or write something. And I thought, you know, storytelling is really important, you know, to any pieces, but especially VR. Personally, I think, in my opinion, storytelling is really important in VR because I'm not saying that is bad but just most of VR projects only sometimes I feel they focused on showing you know fantastic graphic but actually I think there should be some storytelling to deliver message of artist so I wanted to make the proper story for VR and that's why I started working with her and I think it's really worth it.
[00:23:30.432] Kent Bye: And what made you want to work on this project?
[00:23:33.243] Seoyeong Jo: At first, I'm also a former gamer. I really like game mechanics and just wanted to play every game. And I was also interested in VR games and the interactivity of VR seems to be very different from that of video games. I like both, but in VR you have to move your body or use your hand, and this kind of movement was so direct, and I liked its direct movement. Like in video game, when you click space bar, you jump, and space bar means jump. But in VR, not always, but sometimes if VR says jump, you really have to jump. Like this kind of direct connection fascinates me, and I like the idea of wandering around one room. we have to really went around and we have... So you mean walking around? Yes, working around. And when I wanted to see something, we have to really bend our head like that, this direct movement, but in really different and fantastical space. That's what I was so interested in this project and wanted to try and participate with enthusiasm.
[00:24:57.228] Kent Bye: So you have the scans, the letter scans, you have the stories and the interviews, and you start to edit them down into these little reflections on their own personal feelings, but also sometimes those specific sayings are connected to a spatial context of a specific part of the one room, whether it's like the kitchen area or the bathroom and bedroom. And so you have these abstracted rooms that you have a sequence of them, like maybe six or seven or eight, I'm not sure how many, but you go through a number of them and there's this game mechanic of walking around this space and it's sort of like an underwater motif. There's like these floating like jellyfish entities and so you are walking around and you're trying to find the next jellyfish and when you find the next jellyfish then it's revealed a number of quotes that you can read to get a little bit more context that is like this anthropological study of what's it like to live in a one room. And so maybe talk about that process of translating both the LiDAR scans and the information, the data, all the quotes, and to put it into this experience where you're trying to get people to move their body through space, you know, even move their head sometimes to trigger each of the story as it unfolds in each of the rooms where there may be three or four things you have to unlock and then you go to the next room. Yeah, I'd love to hear about your process of designing this as a game-like element where you're moving your body through space to learn more about this phenomena of the One Room.
[00:26:23.115] Sanghee Lee: Yeah, right. So, yeah, we thought that, you know, game design is also really important in VR because, you know, VR, you're in that world with the first-person view. So we think it's really important to design how players move or where to see. So we wanted to design players' behaviors. We cannot control everything in VR, you know. Always they player get distraction. But if we put our game object, player have to get, you know, that is the jellyfish. So player have to find the jellyfish, you know, to play the work. So player just naturally goes walking around rooms and they found out some sentences we put it. And actually there is a sentence even under the bed, you know, can't you find it?
[00:27:16.675] Kent Bye: No, I didn't look under the bed No, I I didn't I don't tend to like to put my head through meshes because it tends to break immersion for me It sort of ruins the illusion for me.
[00:27:25.623] Sanghee Lee: So I tend to not do it How can I say like there is a gap between you know mattress in the floor? So there is a sentences, you know, okay.
[00:27:35.991] Kent Bye: I am So I was standing up most the time I did notice that Sometimes the room was bigger than the boundary of the space. And so sometimes I accidentally found myself running into the wall. And so I was a little bit hesitant or cautious. And there was a moment at the very beginning where I wasn't able to get it triggered. And I was told, oh, you need to get down on your knees to get your head close to the jellyfish. And so that triggered it. So I was using my head to poke around, but I was also a little cautious of accidentally running into the TV wall. It's like, there's like one wall and there's a circle of a curtain, where usually it's okay if you're running into the curtain, but I actually did run into the TV once. So I was a little bit more hesitant, but I was mostly walking around and not crawling around as much. So I don't remember if I saw that specific one, but I wasn't looking extra hard to see any other hidden stuff, but yeah.
[00:28:25.000] Sanghee Lee: Yeah, that's so true. And actually we wanted to use the Guardian, the safer area of VR, as a part of our project, because, you know, it makes you feeling stuck, you know.
[00:28:37.669] Seoyeong Jo: You're confined and locked in, yeah.
[00:28:41.332] Kent Bye: So you're using the VR boundary as a way of also communicating the confined space of a One Room. Yeah. I definitely felt that, yeah.
[00:28:48.918] Sanghee Lee: Yeah, so right. And then you actually have to, you know, really try to get the jellyfish, you know, because there is boundaries, VR boundaries, so sometimes you, you know, hesitate to go there, but you have to go there to get the jellyfish. And, you know, yeah, I think actually the game mechanic we used in project is really simple, but I think it's really effective to, you know, make people move and I think that's why people like kind of liked it you know the walking around the rooms and they find television and also we choose not using the VR controllers because it is nice but if you want to use that controller you have to teach the audience how to use it and it's kind of to me it's a kind of failure because my work is only 15 minutes and some people you know not like you can't you know some people doesn't know how to use it because there's so many buttons and people have to you know just click it to figure out what it is and I think we don't need to use the controller and instead of that we just choose to use our own body you know you just go there and you touch with your asset it just works it and I think it's really direct connection for the action for player yeah and I also talk about the jellyfish the you know special pieces you can find out the one rooms you know actually that species is actually is in the you know real world that species is never get old They just keep repeating becoming adult and become baby again. They just keep repeating.
[00:30:30.733] Kent Bye: So you said they never die?
[00:30:32.228] Sanghee Lee: Yeah, never die. It's real, right? I think that is kind of really nice metaphor, because people just try to chase it, and then at last, you just lose it, you know? The jellyfish goes somewhere, you know, in the deep sea, and it disappear, and I think it means just people really try hard to become other, but they just lose it, and they just never get the life stage they want, you know?
[00:30:58.074] Kent Bye: Yeah, any other reflections on turning this into more of a game-like mechanic?
[00:31:03.364] Seoyeong Jo: Like, at first, we did this exhibition in Korea at first, and when we did this VR setup in Korea, people have really hard time to interact with jellyfish, some kind of jellyfish, like that is on the bed or that is in the bathroom, and it is really hard to direct them how to interact with that kind of jellyfish and so what I found was it is very different when the producer or creator doing the game and when audience just random people doing the game. Because audience have really different level of understanding about game or VR mechanics, so it was really important to make as easy as possible explanation for this movement or this interaction. So we tried to make it easier in this version of VR. I think it is actually easier than that time, yeah.
[00:32:12.990] Sanghee Lee: And there is one thing I'd like to share. The one thing I'm really interested in is, you know, people really believe in... People really believe in instruction? Yes, like... Because in the beginning, there is a line, you know, jump towards the cliff. And people actually really jump it. But it is just a metaphor.
[00:32:36.664] Seoyeong Jo: You know, we just wrote it. We wanted to emphasize towards, yes, towards the jellyfish.
[00:32:42.508] Sanghee Lee: Actually, it just works if you just go forward to the jellyfish, you know, like bend your body. But people just keep jumping and, oh, it never works, you know. But I thought that also it's really interesting. People just believe in the instruction and they really try to, you know, just follow that instruction. And also at the last in the piece, There is sentences, you know, breath. Inhale and exhale.
[00:33:06.443] Kent Bye: So at the end you have instructions to inhale and exhale?
[00:33:09.064] Seoyeong Jo: Yes, yes. It is not like direct instruction. It's kind of wait a moment, like that, wait a moment and be prepared. But people think because they inhale and exhale they are going up inside the VR game, yes.
[00:33:26.770] Sanghee Lee: There was some lady, she asked me, how did you make it? I inhale and exhale. I go up, so I think he's the lady. There is a sensor, you know, checking the breath. And I really enjoyed the people's feedback and their reaction.
[00:33:45.085] Kent Bye: What was their reaction to the content of the piece, of the One Room? Did it bring up emotions, or did they feel seen, or what was their reactions?
[00:33:52.469] Seoyeong Jo: We have a lot of different reactions. What I remember, many people relate this experience with their own experience. Oh, I have lived in one room, or foreigners say that we in London also have to live in very, very small studio, and we can relate with it. And some old ladies came to me and said, oh, it really reminds me of living in Jjokbang. Yes, Jjokbang is the old and more fragile version of one room in Korea.
[00:34:27.723] Sanghee Lee: More floor, it's really small. It's only space for you can lie down. So you just only put your body and that's all.
[00:34:35.490] Seoyeong Jo: Yes, and this old lady thinks about that memory of jokbal when doing this. And also there was other kind of feedback. Some people say it is so confined and kind of not free, and some people don't like it because they expected other things in VR. more fantastical experience, but we provided some kind of confinement. We showed fantastical graphic, but the space itself seems like realistic way. Yes, and some other memorable feedback.
[00:35:18.631] Sanghee Lee: There is a feedback I really liked it. Quite many people says after playing my work and they say, oh it's so poetic and I really like that word and I'm really happy about it because that means we succeed. to deliver what we want to say, you know, through the project, because we wanted to tell them about the story about people living in one room. Because the emotion is really complicated, you cannot say just one sentence. You have to figure it out. and we like to describe in kind of abstract way and I'm really happy about people liked it that the way we choose and I think that's why we make the art project because it's feel like I'm so glad when people get our intention or our messages.
[00:36:13.521] Kent Bye: Yeah. And did you think about potentially using audio recordings or at least, you know, cause you use text and you can read the text and it's abstracted and it allows you to move quickly, but you could also potentially use audio narration. You could have the actual people speaking it and have it translated. So what led you to use the option of text rather than having either a narration or the actual recordings?
[00:36:38.870] Sanghee Lee: Yeah, we also talked about using the audio, but I think there are so many things. You can see graphics and you can see text, but I think voice is just, you cannot concentrate with it. You hear the voice and kind of you just lose it. So that's why we're not using so much narration. We wanted to put it, you know, really specific moment when we think it is needed. So that's why we use the text instead of audio. And actually we did really specific audio design because we collaborate with the music artist, Ginaijik. He's really good at making electronic music. So we collaborate with him and he made the sound. The sound is really keep piling up. So maybe some people can know it. So the sounds get fired up and it's made of the sounds from the rooms, like, you know, the water sound and... So you're slowly adding sounds over time that creates a soundscape that becomes more rich over time. Yeah, and it also matches, you know, filing of the one-rooms, you know. We like to describe the one-room barbell by sound, you know. So that kind of sound design we did. And I think I really like the sound in my project because it's really connected with the concept of the one-room barbell, you know, filing one-rooms.
[00:38:12.342] Seoyeong Jo: And what I liked about the text, we have to see a lot of scribbles on the wall, anywhere, like toilet wall, there are a lot of cars, and there are random scribbles on the public places wall, there are a lot of scribbles, they can be made by some homeless people or some just mischievous young people. So this scribbles doesn't have names on who wrote it, who left it, and they sometimes get erased by people who clean, yes, cleaners. And some just left because it's made by pen, cannot be erased. So this text on the wall in the room, I wanted to show as scribbles that can be erased, but they cannot be erased also in kind of collective unconsciousness. There is still this kind of memory of the phase, unstable and vulnerable phase. Yes, we wanted to show the collective memory in more non-nameable, without name way, yes.
[00:39:29.108] Kent Bye: Awesome. Yeah, and also when you have the text, you're able to put the text in a very specific location. And so it's also annotating the space as well that you can label and annotate the spatial context. So I can see why the text may make more sense. And yeah, and I guess as we start to wrap up, I'd love to hear what you each think is the ultimate potential of virtual reality and what it might be able to enable.
[00:39:55.659] Sanghee Lee: I think virtual reality is established not yet, you know, as a media or genre. So I think there is so much opportunity you can do it and one thing we said before, you know, really have a strong connection with the player's body. I think it's really interesting and And also I'm doing my next project, and it is talking about the bodies of the gap between the actual player and the VR character, because it is not perfectly matched. There is always a gap between their physical bodies. So I think, you know, there are so many things, you know, explore, you know, so many questions and, you know, so many possibilities. So I think the VR gonna be really interesting, became more interesting media, you know, in the future, I think.
[00:40:47.610] Seoyeong Jo: Yeah, potential of VR virtual reality is very big question, yeah. But what I think that's most potential about VR is VR can show, not only show, but it can trigger experience. it can trigger more experience, more in physical way. And it can really make a lot of themes that talking about bodies and bodies experience, physical way of our perceiving about body, or of course, the space around our body, the space, how we feel about it, how we think about it, or how we interact with the space. And I like VR because of that kind of potential group of themes that are unexplored fully in other mediums. And VR can use these kinds of themes to its utmost potential, I think, yes.
[00:41:49.930] Kent Bye: Is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the broader immersive community?
[00:41:54.055] Sanghee Lee: To me just, well actually it's really first time, you know, we just came to this kind of international festival and I really enjoyed, you know, meeting people who made VR project and, you know, game designer or 3D graphic designer and, you know, they're like you can't and I'm really happy to share our story about our project and it's really wonderful time to, you know, Thank you for having us, you know, your podcast.
[00:42:22.001] Seoyeong Jo: Thank you so much. It is my first time to communicate with VR community in this event. I saw a lot of technicians, both directors and producers, and like you, very enthusiastic podcast journalist. And I thought, oh, this is how VR is kind of new medium, but I think it is developing fast because of everyone's effort and everyone's participation and enthusiasm. So it was very nice to see this in, not in Zoom, in body, in face. Yeah. So we wanted to come here as much as possible, yeah, as a nominated work, yeah. So thank you. Yeah, I wanted to thank you everyone and especially you for you. Yeah
[00:43:15.835] Kent Bye: Yeah, it's a really fascinating project to be able to use the technology of VR to capture these spaces, to abstract them, and to, like you said, try to capture these collective memories and reflect on these more anthropological and sociological dimensions of this phenomena of the one room in Korea. And yeah, really fascinating to hear a little bit more about the context of the project. And yeah, I just wanted to thank each of you for joining me here on the podcast. So thank you.
[00:43:40.162] Sanghee Lee: Yeah, thank you for having us.
[00:43:41.843] Seoyeong Jo: Thank you so much.
[00:43:44.924] Kent Bye: Thanks for listening to this interview from Fitness Immersive 2023. You can go check out the Critics Roundtable in episode 1305 to get more breakdown in each of these different experiences. And I hope to be posting more information on my Patreon at some point. There's a lot to digest here. I'm going to be giving some presentations here over the next couple of months and tune into my Patreon at patreon.com slash Voices of VR, since there's certainly a lot of digest about the structures and patterns of immersive storytelling, some of the different emerging grammar that we're starting to develop, as well as the underlying patterns of experiential design. So that's all I have for today, and thanks for listening to the Voices of VR podcast. And again, 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 listener-supported podcast, and so I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue to bring this coverage. So you can become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. Thanks for listening.
