I interviewed Maya: The Birth of a Superhero co-directors Poulomi Basu & CJ Clarke remotely after the SXSW XR Experience 2024. 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 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 continuing on my series of looking at different immersive stories from Southwest, Southwest 2024, today's episode is with a piece called Maya, The Birth of a Superhero. which is a piece that originally showed the first chapter at Soribaca 2023. And I had a previous conversation with Paul, me and CJ back in episode 1244 of the Oasis VR podcast. So definitely recommend also checking out that conversation because lots of really amazing insights into this piece. So this is an interactive story that is taking Quill assets and putting it into Unity to be able to have a little bit more interactivity and agency and also hand tracking within the context of telling the story and using your embodiment to actually interact with this experience as it starts to unfold. They had a little bit of a sneak preview of that in the first chapter that is showed, but it's much more tightly integrated within the full context of the story. And so It's covering the issue of menstrual taboos that are faced by women around the world, especially in India. Pallami is of Indian descent and has also personally experienced a number of this type of taboos from the culture around menstruation. And so she's had a whole previous series called Blood Speaks, both photography projects and immersive 360 video projects with her collaborator cj clark then this is a bit of a continuation of that but moving away from more of the documentary style and starting to lean into more of the affordances of using cgi quill virtual reality animation to explore these different imaginal spaces with symbolic mythic imagery but also this dream-like magical realism and surrealism that they're using to be able to tell the story So for my money, I feel like this is one of the strongest stories that I saw this year at South by Southwest. I didn't attend physically. I didn't see all the projects. I probably saw about two thirds of them, but I was super impressed with what they were able to achieve. And I feel like if I were on the jury, be in the running for some of the best overall experiences that I saw this year, because I really think what they're doing is pushing the actual storytelling medium of virtual reality forward. with a lot of the different techniques that they're using, especially also including different elements of embodiment and interaction to more fully put you into the story as well. So just really super impressed with not only the experience that they created, but they're also visionary artists who are thinking very deeply about the medium. So hopefully that's also reflected in the conversation that I had a chance to have with both Polomi and CJ. So that's what we're covering on today's episode of the Wasteless VR Podcast. So this interview with Polomi and CJ happened on Wednesday, March 27th, 2024. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:02:48.160] Poulomi Basu: Hi, I'm Pulumi Basu. I am an artist, filmmaker, and activist working in the intersection of art, engagement, and technology. And I have used immersive films and mediums to sort of tell socially engaged stories about women's rights, body politics, and climate change, and how they're kind of related and form the larger triangle of intersectional feminism.
[00:03:16.232] CJ Clarke: Hi, I'm CJ Clarke. I'm a director, producer, writer, and yeah, our work goes across many disciplines, focusing on the intersection of art, technology, youth, politics, class, ethnicity, identity, work in bookmaking, films, and virtual reality.
[00:03:39.000] Kent Bye: Maybe you could each give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into working with VR as a medium.
[00:03:46.301] Poulomi Basu: I've been working using virtual reality since 2016. I worked on three massive films for Blood Speaks, which was three live-action VR films about three women in confinement during their menstruation and postpartum bleeding after childbirth. They were like two 16-year-old girls and a young mother, but also another 29-year-old young mother who was in confinement and exile with her baby. So I use VR to sort of make an audience understand what that isolation and confinement meant for people who live outside of our culture and different traditions, and who may not understand the kind of injustices women from the global South have to go through, and sometimes in a very lethal, extreme ways where it might even end up being a death sentence if they continue to bleed, or sometimes a lot of the girls who are in confinement are raped, they get murdered, or they die of snakebite suffixation. So the idea was to sort of use a technology where the medium became the message. Because In all honesty and integrity, in some ways, virtual reality is not a collective experience. And it is quite, at that time at least, an isolating tech, which is claustrophobic and not very comfortable. So for me, it kind of mirrored the confinement and the depression and the isolation that women felt themselves. So it kind of made sense for me to use VR, to sort of use it as a tool to tell the story where it kind of your walls break down and you go into those spaces and have the same evocation of not having a collective experience and being present and locked and closed in a way that is not a pleasant experience. So it is not meant to be a pleasant experience. But maybe CJ can talk a little bit about Maya, the birth of a superhero, and how it turns that around and still continues to use technology of mixed reality and virtual reality in a way where it is extremely confrontational and using a taboo busting subject on blood politics and periods and tampons and shame because the tech itself becomes an agent provocateur. It becomes a tech that is provoking you and it's causing you in this sort of confined space to handle shame in such an intimate and provocative way that you kind of feel the horrors of it and then how you unexpectedly come out of it on the other side.
[00:06:27.783] CJ Clarke: I would say that our way into XR or virtual reality is very organic and very much has been led by the stories that we tell, trying to find the match of the right technology to explore these stories. So I think that we have tried to find, as Polymere said, we tried to find in the live action VR that the story was about claustrophobia and isolation. And to some extent, the tech of wearing a headset is claustrophobic and isolated. And so we tried to kind of match this medium to the message. And Maya, the birth of the superhero, is very much a kind of extension of that process, that thought process of trying to find a way of telling the story that allows the audience to kind of have an embodied experience and this idea of what embodied activism actually means. not necessarily to get someone to walk in someone else's shoes, but at least to be able to identify certain triggers, emotions, traumas, modes, to maybe, you know, a core part of the story of Maya is that you have a South Asian superhero who comes from the East to the West, and he's coming there with power and agency to make the West look at itself afresh and try and assess that taboos around periods, around menstruation, around other women's health issues, and not have a whole host of associated taboos that have become slightly hidden, maybe, in the West, and maybe the West has become slightly complacent about how, quote unquote, developed we are around these things. I mean, one of the things that was often asked around to live action films and blood speaks was that these are only things, or despite there's an extreme form of a practice that has very deep roots across all cultures around the world, was often seen by a sort of non-majority world audience as something that could only happen in the majority world. I think part of the motivating factor for telling this story was finding a way in which we wanted to reveal the fact that these kind of exiles of the mind, so to speak, happen everywhere. Some of these taboos have become well hidden, hidden in plain sight in the West. So it was this kind of You know, all of these kind of stories coming together to find a way of tackling some of these ideas in a way in which allowed the audience to embody this experience, allowed them to have a very fun cinematic experience, but also be disarmed by some of the interaction and maybe even do the piece before they even realize they've been having to grab a tampon and all of this kind of stuff.
[00:09:07.398] Poulomi Basu: I think the important thing is to understand that we're not here, Maya, and blood speaks is not a wellness tool. It's not a tech tool. We're not interested in technology where the tech is becoming a tool or something. For us, the tool is actually the storytelling. the storytelling and the art that is telling the story has to be so strong that you forget you're using a tech or you're in the tech. So I think that is what I was always aspiring to do. And I continue to do it so that you almost forget that you're inside a technology or you're even in the tech. And the advancement of technology should be a barrier and almost in a way to sort of tell the story or the strength of the story. So that is kind of essential for us because In some ways, it's also a reclamation of your own agency in telling the 360 stories, because the women themselves, I wasn't even present when I was telling the story, so the women had the agency to tell their own story the way they wanted, how they wanted to confront the audience when they walk into their space. And with Maya, it's about reclaiming your own inner strength and power in an embodied way, of course, but also in a way that doesn't really make you just think, oh, the tech, how are we using this new mixed reality or this new function or this new thing, which I think is the dominant conversation within the XR industry a lot that I have come upon. New work keeps coming out depending on what the new tech that is in the market. It's very driven by capital. you know, not so much by storytelling or like what is urgent. I think the importance for me in making this work, the difficulty that I've experienced in just making people understand that something that's as essential as the marking of a girl's puberty or a beginning of a period implies two larger intersectional issues of reproductive justice, health, education, and climate change. Because what is the important thing is to understand is that there are 24 million girls in India alone who drop out of school as soon as their periods begin. There are 700,000 girls in Palestine and Gaza right now who don't have access to any privacy, any sanitary products, giving birth in the middle of nowhere, and bleeding through their way into a war zone. In the UK alone, we have massive homeless poverty. It's extremely taxed on all kinds of weird products. There are parts of the world that doesn't even use tampons, including India. This stuff is everywhere. It's just happening in different latent extreme forms. And not getting reproductive justice will imply climate justice because all of this will affect a woman's capability of occupying spaces where important decisions are being made. You know, so it is an extremely, extremely important body of work as far as I'm concerned. If I dare, if I should say so myself, because it's my project, but I just mean it in terms of the repercussions of something that might seem so, you know, it's just periods, but it's not really, is it?
[00:12:15.788] Kent Bye: Yeah and I really love how this project is able to use the medium of VR to explore new ways of telling a story like this because you do take the viewer or the person who's experiencing this piece on a journey that feels very dreamlike. At the very beginning you talk about dreams and there's a lot of mythic and symbolic imagery throughout and you know lots of embodiment as well but I'd love to maybe start with how you started to put this all together in terms of like your process. And it does feel like I'm walking through a dream and an interactive dream at that. But where did you begin in trying to recreate this aspect of this taboo, this exile, this empowerment on the other flip side of that to come out of that shame and exile into this more fully empowered, like pulling from lots of different genres throughout the entire piece from your genre, like superhero. So yeah, I'd love to hear where you started to piece everything together.
[00:13:12.747] Poulomi Basu: I'll pick on the dream part and then CJ can maybe answer the second part, the superhero part. So the dream part for me, I think as an artist, it's always been an important part of sort of tapping into your deeper subconscious and your unconscious sides of your being. It's something, it exists in quantum physics, it exists in yogic philosophy, it exists in tantra, it exists in Greek mythology, it exists in you know, Latin, sub-American cultures, you know, Dali talked about it. So the power of the subconscious and the unconscious, you know, is something that is extremely important as an artist and sort of tapping into making creative work. And often for myself, I feel like ideas come to me when I'm in that hollow, you know, and visions come to me when I'm in that space of hollow where I'm neither awake nor asleep. But like, you know, you get these sort of things, they happen to you because you're tapping into these real like different levels and depths of your sort of consciousness, you know, and there is something there, you know, and that's kind of begins the journey of Maya. That's why we wanted to use this sort of dream because this is also something that is culturally exist in Eastern and Southeast and Southern nations, like we have the concept of mystical dreams. We have concepts of rebirth, resurrection, of past lives, current lives, karmas. It's something that is very, very tapped into the Eastern philosophy and South Asian, Southeastern philosophy. We believe in this stuff. So it is very much a part of how we think. And I think that African, if you think about animism and African cultures and Latin American cultures, it is still the same. So it's really the Western society that is so bound on science that don't believe in these things. So In this particular part, I'm very much tapping into the Southern animisms and Southern philosophies and existentialism to sort of build on this idea, you know, of where is it science or is it real or is it, you know, but we don't really answer it, which is fine. Because as I said, even quantum physics, you know, it doesn't deny it. Nothing denies the unconsciousness or the greater consciousness. And regarding how we wanted to turn it into a superhero genre, CJ do you want to speak a little bit about it?
[00:15:29.916] CJ Clarke: Well I guess, I mean I think it's also the important thing is that we were obviously we did a lot of reading and research and thinking about the story and the way in which the symbolic and the wider elements tap into or allude to a range of different ideas and ways in which, you know, society in kind of pre-patriarchal times organized itself around matriarchy and how that was linked into, as we say in the piece, about the first time being kind of the lunar time around the lunar calendar and around the monthly cycle of all moments. in a period and the kind of these deeper ideas, some of which are only hinted to or alluded to in the piece, but we wanted to create this very kind of rich experience that had a lot of different references and had a lot of ideas that resonate on many different levels. Maybe you get them, maybe you don't, maybe you pick up on half ideas, maybe you can watch it again to find out. It's not about providing necessarily about easy answers, it's about asking questions or posing interesting ways of thinking or different ways of thinking. So that was what we wanted to have running throughout the whole piece. And then we worked, you know, we had, you know, from the very beginning, we had these ideas around that it had to be a girl in London, and it had to you know, have these different manifestations of the superhero coming at different points. And this interplay between reality and dream, we wanted to set it up as a kind of structural idea, but then also then work around it so that you are left to wonder. Is it dream? Is it reality? To what extent is the individual characters, different manifestations of the same personality? All of these things are really more designed to pose questions and provide a sense of mystery or wonder, which I think is the lifeblood of art, whether it's painting or literature or film or whatever. So we were trying to then find ways in which to tell this story in a compelling way, which had narrative cadence that took you through this journey and posed questions about where we're going, who we are, and just, you know,
[00:17:53.699] Poulomi Basu: Yeah, and what basically should our powers be today? If we were to represent and come from a part of the world that is less privileged, that is always have to take decisions that are political because bodies are on the front line of it and we're affected by deportation, attacks, wars, genocides, calamities. So what kind of powers to people who come from that part of the world who want to see feminist futures. By feminist futures, I mean futures that is inclusive of everyone. Also inclusive of people who are greatly oppressed because that's what intersectional feminism is. It's the people who are oppressed by their race, their gender, which part of the world they come from, you know? I mean, including those communities and people is what's going to see change and transformational change in the world, you know. So the idea was just kind of to understand and create the idea of manifestation, which again is something of the very Eastern philosophy, you know, like this sort of manifestation of your various cells that CJ talks about. And then we Research that we proved it and we backed it up with history of archaeology with history of sculpture with history of painting through museums objects cultures seen from different societies and different books and we backed it up with like actual sort of references and frames to then create the line drawings from it. And then sort of so if you were a student of culture, archaeology or history, you would still be able to go into this VR and take it further if you really wanted to learn something from it. Or if you just want to enjoy VR and have a good experience, you would still find it at least inspiring and like otherworldly, you know.
[00:19:34.943] CJ Clarke: And then what I was going to say was about the notion of the superhero and what is a superhero and what are the ideas around the superhero genre and these notions of power and how you use power. You know, often the superhero uses violence, we hope, for good, whereas we wanted the powers here to be built around the powers to create, transform and heal, you know, notions of care and healing, which were kind of very important in making the superhero in our piece quite different, I guess, and then looking at ways in which that in and of itself is a critique of the superhero genre.
[00:20:14.110] Poulomi Basu: Yeah, I just want to add one thing that in order to build feminist futures and having futurism through tech in your work, I mean, it is essential for us, for the superhero in this space to sort of recognize healing as being an essential feminist living and survival tool, you know, an essential feminist experience, you know, and by feminist, I mean something for everyone, not just women. as healing is a necessity and creation and transformation is a necessity for us in order to prepare mentally, physically, and spiritually for our continued struggle. Yeah.
[00:20:47.409] Kent Bye: And I had a chance to first see the first part of this back at Tribeca of 2023, and then here at South by Southwest, you're showing the full version of Maya, the birth of a superhero. And as I look at this piece, there is a lot of these elements from different genres, different media, You know, you have the horror genre, you have the superhero genre, you have aspects of dreams and mythology and symbolism. And so in our previous conversation that we had back at Tribeca, both of you are coming from this real interdisciplinary use of lots of different media from photography and film and now VR. And I'm wondering if you can maybe expand upon if there were any specific reference points that you were trying to take aspects from different genres or different media and really tie it all together here in this VR piece.
[00:21:38.974] Poulomi Basu: I think artists move between mediums, sort of great musicians, whether that's David Bowie or whether that's fashion designers like Alexander McQueen, all great visionaries and good artists, you know, would want to move between mediums and find different ways of telling stories. I mean, take, for example, David Lynch, you know, he's a painter. he sings, he makes music, he writes and he makes incredible, dreamy, psychedelic films. So I don't see why anybody who wants to make work using tech has to necessarily come from a tech industry or will always have to tether to new modules and new emerging techs as they might feel the pressure to keep doing it because it's, again, as I say, it's driven by capital. So I think the important thing to understand is that when you make work in any medium, it doesn't come from your knowledge about that medium or other works that has been made in that medium. It comes from your experience of own life and your lived experience around the world. And I think that is the most important thing we wanted to channel in this piece. For us, it's just a tool. We just see technology as a tool and that hasn't changed for cinema, that hasn't changed for photography. My decision of what lens I might use to make photographs would not affect the image I'm making. You know, that is the point like I've always even had as a photographer, like, you know, your text should never come in the way of you telling a certain story or making good art. But yes, it can enhance and it can help your storytelling further and your experience further. But all of this comes from your own real life experiences of things you listen to, books you read, or people you meet in your life, experiences you've had in your life. So interdisciplinariness is a part of your daily way of living. So it is not something you walk or you do. It is just your daily practice, your daily way of organizing. An act of kindness towards a stranger is something you should be just doing every day almost. It's not something you pick up and you just have to think like, I'm going to do some activism today. So what I'm trying to say is that your everyday practice as an artist or a storyteller should mirror your own life. There is no division between that. I guess all of these interdisciplinary pursuits and being in this constant motion and flux and praxis and dialectical movement comes from how you live your life. And that just pours into the films you make, the VR you want to make, or the music you want to make, as far as I'm concerned.
[00:24:17.957] CJ Clarke: I guess you always want to keep yourself in a state of perpetual arrival. You don't want to ever arrive anywhere and think you've conquered something. So I think for us, yeah, we work across a whole range of interdisciplinary mediums to find the best ways to tackle the story that seems to be born very organically out of a process which is never ending. I think that as we've been around this space for a while now, as you've made this project, I think Myra is an incredibly technically complicated piece of work. There's all sorts of things happening behind the scenes to take all of the illustrations out of Quill and bring them into the game engine and do all sorts of things, but we don't really wear that on our sleeve. We don't really see this sort of shouting about the tech aspect as being particularly profitable, just as you wouldn't shout about what type of camera you're using to make a photograph. So I think the technological aspects of any kind of medium need to remain hidden. It's just a tool that you use. There's a means to an end that allows you to create something which is unique in and of itself. The story of Maya as a VR piece is a very different experience to Maya, the graphic novel that we're working on, or things like that. Each different medium has different strengths that allows you to explore different aspects of the story.
[00:25:43.878] Poulomi Basu: I think it's important to see that I see a lot in the XR world, people using terms like experts, leaders. I'm just amazed because I guess as an artist, you're always learning, you're always evolving, you're always in this motion where you feel there's so much to learn and evolve and keep pushing forward that you can never really master becoming an expert or a leader in anything. you know, you're just here in motion sort of making things, making people have a visceral and a compelling experience of it. And that's going to change and grow as you grow, you know. So, so yeah, I mean, it's no offense to those who say these things, but I'm just saying like, hey, who wants to be a leader anyway?
[00:26:29.285] Kent Bye: Were there any specific VR experiences or other piece of media like movies or other horror genre or superhero genre? I'm wondering if you could maybe list some of the influences as you were putting together this piece. This piece really feels like a fusion of so many different strands of influences and genres and ideas. And so I'm wondering if there are any specific experiences or movies or other piece of art or stories that were really inspiring you to fuse all these things together.
[00:26:57.878] CJ Clarke: Well, I was gonna say that we watched a hell of a lot of superhero genre films, series, and God knows what else to really feel like we knew our subject, I guess, or a sensible subject. But I mean, that, in a sense, that provided, I don't know, inspiration is the right word, reverse inspiration, or kind of maybe an idea of what we didn't want to do, or what kind of points in the story that we needed to touch on, but then we might want to subvert in a different direction. So that would be one thing. But I think we pulled together a whole range of experiences from our interest in science fiction and horror and literature and to kind of try and... Painting and painting as well.
[00:27:40.469] Poulomi Basu: Yeah, I mean, we were looking at really subversive sort of works because we wanted to make something that is subversive, you know, so we were looking at works like fine artwork from like of different artists. For instance, the Cuban artist, you know, we looked at a lot of her work, you know, and kind of other... Yeah, we looked a lot from Belkis Ayun, the Cuban artist who died by suicide at a very young age, Cuban black artist. We looked at Ana Mendieta.
[00:28:13.465] CJ Clarke: We looked at Francis Bacon, you know, all of these different things, you know.
[00:28:22.192] Poulomi Basu: Avatar, we took some inspiration for Avatar, you know, I think that's slightly obvious, but we also wanted to like pay a tribute to sort of indigenous stories and magic of the forest. And of course, we also use the classic superhero endings, you know, trope of how you're on top of this building, like, you know, because we really wanted to do that as well. But yeah.
[00:28:46.068] CJ Clarke: But I guess also things like J.G. Ballard are very important, even though you wouldn't think it from watching the piece, but like J.G. Ballard is all around reality that gets a slight twist and suddenly becomes something else, even if it doesn't seem to be a semblance of it looks like the real world, but it's not quite, you know, something has happened to it. Yeah, that's why it sort of abuses my
[00:29:11.706] Poulomi Basu: Yeah, it uses magical realism and surrealism as sort of slight probes to sort of create the dystopian sort of architecture around even modern day London and some of the other scenes. Yeah, yeah. I mean, and of course, for the soundtrack, we were very lucky to get Bishy, but we took a lot of sort of references from John Carpenter to like, you know, synth wave to Indian classical soundtracks, but also, you know, Middle Eastern sounds. And so, yeah, it was like we were pulling from a whole different genres and spaces to sort of create something that we felt could be eclectic by mixing different things. Because again, because the idea was that people were always comparing and pitting us with projects that have been done before in VR, but we wanted to do something that everything in art is obviously done before, right? Like everything's a derivative, but at the same time, we want to do something that kind of felt and had its unique look, And we really, really wanted to use Quill because we knew that it has the power of executing what an artist's vision looks like. But also, at the same time, we did not want something that looks proper, high-budget, polished, like, you know, animation films do. We wanted it to look like something from a teenager's world, but something that also is organic and you're moving between things. Things are coming and lines are coming and disappearing. from actual line drawings that we had before Amori illustrated them, you know. So everything was very controlled and every single color and every single decision of like every little piece was taken by us. So it was quite laborious. Yeah.
[00:30:58.948] Kent Bye: You have to say the music is really amazing in this piece as well. It's a pretty key part of the overall creating that feeling throughout the entirety of the piece as well as it goes through the different phases. And I guess as you start to think about this piece in terms of structure, because it is like very associative and kind of a dream logic that defies structure but you're still taking us on a journey that has an arc that goes from this dialectic from the exile and claustrophobia or shame and guilt and we're creating that through the medium and these symbolic representations of that and then into this more exalted empowerment embodiment where you're able to regain that control over your life through these magical superpower of the magic that you're really diving into. But I'd love to hear you maybe talk about how you think about the narrative structure of this piece and if it is just creating this dialectic of the exile versus the empowerment or other ways to break it up into different sets or acts or chapters.
[00:31:56.496] Poulomi Basu: I mean, the fundamental principle that we learned through everything that I've read in my life from black feminist writers to Indian writers to like women writers who lived in oppressed societies or women in general are oppressed all over the world but especially women who are not white you know and especially women who don't have that power of whiteness you know so I guess it was important for us to understand that wherever you feel the shame you know which is that portal where your womb is or your vagina is your perineum is or your erotica is, is exactly where you will also feel the power. So we have to nail that at the first go that you know your power is the secret weapon or the secret strength that lies exactly in the place where you feel the shame, you know. So that became like this hook for us and then we had to translate it into this hand thing, which CJ can talk a little bit about the narrative arc of how the power is then manifested and how it doesn't work and then it begins to work. Do you want to talk about it, CJ, a little bit?
[00:33:02.670] CJ Clarke: Yeah, well, I guess let's take a step back from that in terms of the structure itself was I think we delight in influences and things, you know, different works of art, which kind of subvert your understanding of their logic, I guess, that where you set up a structure, which might be between reality and might be dreams. But as you move through the piece, you kind of have this more, more be a strip kind of idea where it just kind of turns around. You're in this kind of never ending loops where the structure gradually diminishes and you actually left the question about what is dream what is reality what is the connection between the two and and does it really matter you know like. you don't have to explain everything, but you want to create this kind of rich and layered experience that allows an audience to be transported on a narrative that has cadence, that feels cinematic. Cinematic is a word which is often come up as we showed this to different audiences. And you know, this kind of idea of this epic experience that takes you through and you have touchstones that allow you to understand where you are on the narrative and on the character, you know, the character that you embody kind of as you're changing. your hands and the use of the hand tracking, their changing of colors as your power, you know, manifests or grows, your understanding of your power, what this power in your blood actually means. And so I think, yeah, we wanted to sort of set up a structure that we undermine, but we undermine in a playful and provocative way.
[00:34:41.670] Kent Bye: Yeah and you had mentioned that you're using Quill but at the same time you're also using Unity and you know I've had a chance to see a number of different Quill pieces and there doesn't tend to be a lot of ways that you can actually engage or interact directly except for if you're using the Quill animation or their VR animation player that allows you to maybe switch scenes or change perspectives, but here you're able to bring in your hands and embodiment and have some interactivity and some choices that you provide the user as well that this piece and so wondering if you can maybe elaborate on some of those more interactive components with the hand tracking and the core aspect of using embodiment and putting the user's hands and experiences within this piece that is also tying into the narrative of trying to re-empower people as well. So I'd love to hear about that process of integrating both the hand tracking and how are you trying to use this level of embodiment to really feed into the story that you're telling.
[00:35:36.832] CJ Clarke: I mean, I guess the hand tracking as a technological aspect came about in the early stages of developing the piece. And I think it was quite clear when I saw it that just being able to see your hands and wiggle your fingers is an inherently magical thing when you're in this kind of virtual space. So I think it was quite clear from that moment that we, one, we would use the hand tracking, that we would dispense with the controllers, and therefore we have had to work quite hard on the kind of user experience to create a level of seamless interactivity that allows a kind of non-game audience, you know, you would say, to be able to understand what they have to do and not get stuck. Which is, you know, as anyone who's done these things, it's quite a challenge because in a computer game, you die, you have a death state. Therefore, you learn, you move on, you refine your interactions, you do it again. But obviously, in a kind of linear narrative piece that has interaction, you don't have that luxury. So you have to try and find a way. of seamlessly weaving in the interactions to advance or move on the narrative. You don't want to make people get stuck because that obviously destroys the overall experience. You don't want to be too didactic in your instructions because that, again, breaks the spell of being in any form of artistic experience. You want to maintain that magic. So I think that we worked quite hard to try and find a way in which that happens. And by and large, you know, we think that we've been successful in that in terms of having sort of now shown it to quite a large number of people and everyone makes it through the experience and is able to take something from those interactions. Like we say, a big part of it is that you have to touch a tampon at various points to advance, which again, that was a very deliberate action to make sure that This is a piece aimed at a broad audience, male and female, so we want... Yeah, and also a lot of audience that doesn't use tampon, like, you know.
[00:37:42.382] Poulomi Basu: So, I mean, I think we had a lot, we had pushback in the beginning, you know, from different spaces, they thought it was too much. And from people in the Western societies, who thought it was too much, it was too embarrassing, it was too much to have a tampon as an interactive element and stuff. But we stuck our ground and we knew it was going to be key for us. But we had a lot of pushback. But we had a great team at VR for Good. with Meta, Amy, and she just knew and she just held her ground with ideas on that front, which was like very, very grateful because you're kind of walking this entertainment, mainstream slash artist, provocative sort of line, which is a tricky line to walk. You know, it's not an easy line to walk. CJ, maybe you can tell Ken a little bit about how we started using the hand tracking in the beginning and the end, you know, when we started using the mixed reality, we built it in like early last year when it was not even being used. So that is kind of where your interaction first begins. You're propelling from your immediate circumstances and you come back to the real world where your real life journey begins again once you're out of this dream world.
[00:38:52.034] CJ Clarke: I mean, again, I think it just it was something just occurred to me that this is again, it's very Well, that was when the Quest 2, the pass through was in black and white then, but just seeing the world through this kind of pixelated filter. So it was your world, your space, the real world, but it had a slight layer, a twist to it. Again, I just thought this was very magical and that we should find a way of using and playing with this. to sort of create another structural element to the narrative structure that seems to be pulling you between different magical realms and spaces. I mean, even the elements of the world which we've created, which purport to be the real world, are twisted. We have schools with no walls, sitting within skyscrapers of London, with the city bearing down upside down above you. So everything is kind of filtered. and kind of has these, yeah, so yeah, because we are at the end of reality was there for just, just a way of, of making you an agent in this journey, I guess, and kind of transporting you through these different spaces, and you using your, your hands, and nothing but your hands and magic, really, to kind of transform the world around you, and transport you from something that purports to be your world, your space, into this magical journey and back again, you know,
[00:40:20.177] Poulomi Basu: Okay, the important thing I think is why we use hands because at the very basic, we wanted people to know that all of this, the change comes from in you. It comes from that same place where you feel the shame, comes your power, and all of this is within your hands to control. You know, you can really do something about it. It's within your hands. It's an expression we use on a daily basis, you know? So I guess it was very organic. And of course, I mean, VR in hands is quite magical. also, you know, so it was a very simple idea, something people use on an everyday basis, come on, it's in your hands to make this happen. It's within you to do it, you can do it, you know, if you really want to, yeah. So that was really like, it was so easy as an idea, you know, and also for people to feel like people have come out of the experience saying they feel empowered from enrage to empower, they feel healed, they feel like, yeah, it is within our power, it is within our hands, we can do this, you know, something as simple and as like, basic as that. You know? And I mean, we came out of a flying four-star review in The Guardian. Like, that was just a bit of a shocker for us, but like, it just doesn't happen, right? It only happens when, like, when we were proud because the work kind of spoke to an audience outside of the echo chamber of, say, the VR press, or like, it's hard to get press in this sort of stuff. So, no, we were very proud and we felt that it is speaking to audiences who do not even want to get into headsets. you know, so yeah, that was, that was humbling for us.
[00:41:49.878] Kent Bye: Yeah. I think you're really tying a lot of things together here to tell the story. And I think we've covered a lot of the interactive components and you know, the music is amazing. And also you have different ways that you're telling a story, both with a narration, but then you have these scenes that are playing out with peers in a school or family, mother or the community members and the father. So there's a lot of different ways that you're telling a story. But the one thing that we haven't really dug into too much is the way that you use the environment itself to tell stories because you're using, you know, CJ, you talked about the blending and blurring of this mobius strip of what's dream, what's reality and the fusion of that. And there's a lot of ways in which the environmental design is reflecting this fusion it's kind of fractured or it's blending these different modes of reality at the same time but just the way that you take us symbolically through ways that you're representing exile or ways that you're representing the shame from the community and ways that you represent the body and the inner parts of your body even and using a lot of mythic and dreamlike imagery. So I'm wondering if you could maybe expand upon how you're using all of the affordances of the environment to also tell the story.
[00:43:00.278] Poulomi Basu: I'm going to quickly say two lines because I am speaking a lot and then CJ can continue. I guess because we started saying that we were using magical realism and sort of surrealist, sort of dystopian storytelling, visual transitions between scenes, you know, I mean the hallmark of why we decided to do this because It is the system, it's the political system that sits above everything, every story that creates these dystopian worlds, right? Whether that's Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale, or Maya, or Ursula K. Le Guin's Octavia Butler's novels. the pointy buildings or the fractured rooms and everything is a psychological interpretations of the dystopian is that exists within systemic injustices of society that exists very much on top that we cannot access and we cannot break down, you know, so I guess that was important for us to kind of show in the everyday environment of what we were navigating, you know, but also the fear and the stickiness and like the psychological sort of barriers of how we could translate it using different colours or different rooms. CJ, do you want to say anything about it?
[00:44:13.466] CJ Clarke: I mean, it comes out very much from where we are and who we are as artists. And I think that all of these specific ideas are in the mix. But I think, you know, on a fundamental visual experience level of having awe and wonder in what you're seeing is we wasn't really thinking about what was good for the technological process and power of a certain headset or what might be done. We just kind of had these bunch of ideas and like, you know, you're in this space and you want to be Well, what would it be like if your world is, you know, one of the lines from The Thing is about, you know, your world turns upside down and what it literally is, your world is breaking apart at the seams and buildings are growing out of the sky and, you know, you're in a classroom with no walls and you can see infinitely in each direction to experience the city in which you're meant to be. I think we just wanted to create this very, very visually rich experience in which you wasn't bounded by what might be the logical thing to do, which is have a classroom with walls because it saves process and power and it doesn't create complications for all the sort of technology and whatever. But we wasn't really thinking about that. We just had these very set of core ideas that we knew that we just had this feeling would be an emotive and rich experience for an audience. And we just kind of wanted to run with those and find ways in which to make that vision a reality.
[00:45:52.999] Kent Bye: So you had talked about this idea of embodied activism, a way that you can tell stories using these immersive technologies. And you're also talking about the larger political ecology dynamics of both the VR technology itself, but also the stories that you're telling and how that fits into the dynamics of power of people who hold the power versus the people who are oppressed. And this is a means of providing a way of allowing people to feel that sense of embodied empowerment through the storytelling and through the use of technology. And also in the larger context of world itself, the technologies itself have these different power dynamics of who has access to the technology and who doesn't. And also as storytellers, you know, really visionary, surrealist, and really pushing the edge of what's possible in the context of telling these stories. I'm wondering if you have any reflections on some of these existing power dynamics, even within the context of the technology itself and how as storytellers, you try to focus more on this story, but also at the same time, reveal some of these existing power structures that is happening in the context of the story, but also how stories like this can get out into the world. And really, if you have a theory of change for what this type of embodied activism could enable, given all the existing constraints of the world today.
[00:47:14.552] Poulomi Basu: Yeah, I mean, I guess embodied activism by using virtual reality, mixed reality, It's powerful because firstly, if you look at the history of embodiment and whether it's in just simple action of movement or you look at somatic stuff, you look at any kind of yogic philosophy, the minute your body is engaged with anything you're thinking or acting, you're automatically creating those sensors inside yourself. So you're reflecting, you're engaging, then you're resisting, and then you're transforming. And we decided to then follow exactly that narrative arc while trying to tell that story. So in the beginning, you feel the shame, then you've got to do your work. So you've got to educate yourself about oppression and embodiment, which Maya comes and she tells you, and then you explore your own body oppression and how it's showing up in your own body. and then you learn to decolonize your own body because you identify and uncouple those trauma patterns, you know, through how we're telling the story of how she's trying to go through the society and realizing it's happening all around her. She's not alone, like, you know, this is not just about her and it's within her family, it's intergenerational trauma, it's intergenerational violence, you know, and then finally you start reclaiming your body image, you know, and then you cultivate your senses. which is when your powers are becoming greater and you eventually, you know, you go into the battle with the main monster who's a manifestation again of nothing but your own inner self of fear and trauma and pain, you know, because there is obviously no, I mean, actually no monster. But then all of this is interrogating your own sort of non-verbal communication and verbal sort of having the sort of monologue with yourself throughout the piece almost, you know. with some characters coming in and on. And then finally you are liberating your own movement through your hands and through your body. So in a way you learn about your own body privilege and how it manifests or how it doesn't have any body privilege or how it should be manifested to create transformational change and liberation. So hopefully when you're out of the game, you can then understand how we can then take this into the real world and understand in a very simple way, what have I learned? What are the pointers of what the story has taken us to? There are four or five of these things, from essentially doing your inner work, decolonizing your body, exploring your own body oppression, how it's showing up, all of these things. So, you know, and then once you do it and once you've kind of propelled those monsters out of your life, then you work on others and you empower others and activate and animate others to do that, because that's where the solidarity comes in. You know, once we do this ourselves, we have to help other people. And that's how we align into different movements. You know, why do we have movements between black and brown feminism with LGBTQI activism? What I mean is transnational feminism. So we not only do the work and then we align ourselves with other movements and other solidarities. That's how we push societies forward. That's how we see real changes. So something from very small, playing a funny game, hopefully make people understand that there are larger implications of these things. And who knows, I've just said so much, I feel like, wow, I could run a workshop on this right now. But there are other gamers who are doing it as well. So it's pretty cool, I think, if you really want to dig deep about what it means to be militant about self-love, your own body, and then how you can pour it out in the world and bring people together and align with other movements and start seeing real transformational change. So what might seem as something very simple can actually... And it all starts with you. So that's the moral of my... That is what the work is about.
[00:51:05.443] CJ Clarke: But I would say the eagle-eyed viewer would see that the loading screen starts with a quote from Audre Lorde about your silence won't protect you. And I think that is a key thing, not just in terms of the protagonist having to journey through trauma and shame and come out the other side, but also for every character, for the player, for everyone. you know, you may be pro something, but unless you stand up for it, then you might as well be for the status quo. So I think that's a key thing to kind of turn this idea of activism and how all struggles of representation and decolonization or against colonization are intersectional with each other, feminism or, you know, climate and climate change.
[00:51:55.905] Poulomi Basu: You know, climate problem is a patriarchal problem. You know, if you look into the history of eco-feminism, you know, it's patriarchal societies propel violence against nature and women and all, everything that, you know, so nature, nature, we've had these debates going on for a long time. So it's not something new, you know, Caliban and the witch, like, i mean i'm just like pulling from different literature or history or cinema you know i mean books so it's nothing new you know we're just filtering all these various ideas and things into something very fun and simple to tell the story but there are there's like an entire education or workshopping or so many things around it you can actually do to sort of galvanize And hopefully, you know, we don't want to push it and preach people because that's not what one should do. But everybody should have their own sort of understanding of transcending with the work and then seeing what works best for them and take it forward and follow in their own journey and make one small little contribution or change to the world that hopefully will benefit society and everyone.
[00:53:04.654] Kent Bye: Right. And, uh, and finally, what do you each think is the ultimate potential of this type of virtual reality, immersive storytelling and embodied activism might be, and what am I able to enable?
[00:53:17.918] Poulomi Basu: I think Charlotte writes in the Guardian piece, Charlotte Johnson writes in the Guardian piece, I mean, the journalist, I think she came out crying and then she was laughing at some, it was just unbelievable. I guess galvanizing and pushing the participants' juror is very important, I think, and not many mediums can do it. But I feel immersive alone, like most other mediums, cannot do it. You need a combination of different things to propel and move things forward. Because I think the power of it lies still in how many people can like, you know, can experience this. And that is still a problem with immersive, you know, in many ways. But I think not many mediums have embodiment, you know. But understanding why, like, even on a day when AI is coming forward and like, you know, all these new technologies. It's important to remember that all of this is going to be for the good or the worse of our future or our planet, depending on whose hands tools fall into, you know. Immersive storytelling will also be great depending on whose hand it's falling into, you know. Is it embodying and activating the right people or is it like radicalizing people? All of this depends on technology-related stories, depends on whose hand the tech is falling into. And I think that's the most important thing to understand, why we use immersive technology to tell a certain story and when is the right time to do it, not simply because it's capital that's moving the tech forward and emerging forms of techs. are more and more coming out in the world, you know? It's still good to make a good, powerful VR story. It is still great to have a 360 VR story if it's really, really doing the work, you know? So, it's about understanding why, when, how we choose a certain tool to tell a certain story, you know? And who is the person telling that story? What is that person's narrative? And whose narrative is being cut out, you know. So there are many different factors, but essentially, yes, the point is who's telling the story, whose narrative and why you're using the tech you're using, you know, to tell that story.
[00:55:29.137] CJ Clarke: I mean, I would say that the limit is only the limit of your imagination. And I mean, the history of art tells you painting, you know, and writing life story telling a thousand years old. I mean, cinema, photography, VR, the technological mediums are nothing but the blink of an eye. I mean, you might even argue that cinema is a very immature medium. In that context, VR is even more immature, I guess, or the XR space. But, you know, as the history of art tells us, kind of rich, deep, layered experiences are the ones which endure. And I guess that's name of the game, isn't it? I mean, it doesn't really matter what technology you're in. But as long as the technology is the thing which garners too much attention or too much talk or too much navel gaze, then we're in problem. But as long as you focus on rich, deep, and emotional experiences, then that's where the future always is.
[00:56:33.619] Kent Bye: Awesome. Is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the broader ERMA community?
[00:56:38.885] Poulomi Basu: I think you've said everything we needed to say, right? I think the important is to focus on like, you know, world building, rather than like the future of technology in itself.
[00:56:49.376] CJ Clarke: We've said quite a lot of things I don't know. Other than, you know, if you're thinking of getting the dog, take a rescue dog.
[00:56:57.960] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, Pulumi and CJ, I think this piece, Maya, The Birth of a Superhero, you're pushing so many things forward in terms of both what's possible with the medium of virtual reality and this fusion between dream logic and the symbolism and the myths and the music and the stories that you're telling here and the embodiment, the activity, there's so many things that you're fusing together. And I think just it's telling a really powerful story and one that is really meaningful as well. And I think that just all of your insights for how you're thinking about it as well and your design process. And for me, it shows what's possible with how you can use the medium to both tell a story, but also to pull in all these other unconscious mythic symbolic elements. you know, that type of symbolic fluency that as people understand how to both understand those aspects of the unconscious and these mythic symbolic dimensions of the dream world, and then start to fuse them into these immersive experiences in a way that is telling a story that feels like I'm in a dream. Like when you're in a dream, it doesn't always rationally make sense, but there's a lot of deeper story elements that are Mythically moving through the story and the interactivity as well that you're kind of seamlessly blending in Elements from the world that we've seen but also into the unity and creating this whole embodied experience at the same time so really quite a masterful blend of all these different elements and really glad to have an opportunity to see it as it is finished up here from initially seeing at Tribeca and seeing it now and and it's more finished form here at South by Southwest and looking forward for other people having a chance to be able to see this as well. So thanks again for joining me here on the podcast to help break it all down.
[00:58:34.307] Poulomi Basu: Thank you.
[00:58:34.927] Kent Bye: Thank you for your generosity and your time. So thanks again for listening to this interview. This is usually where I would share some additional takeaways, but I've started to do a little bit more real-time takeaways at the end of my conversations with folks to give some of my impressions. And I think as time goes on, I'm going to figure out how to use XR technologies within the context of the VoicesofVR.com website itself to do these type of spatial visualizations. So I'm putting a lot of my energy on thinking about that a lot more right now. But if you do want a little bit more in-depth conversations around some of these different ideas around immersive storytelling, I highly recommend a talk that I gave on YouTube. You can search for StoryCon Keynote, can't buy. I did a whole primer on presence, immersive storytelling, and experiential design. So, that's all that I have for today, and I just want to thank you all 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 people like yourself in order to continue to bring you this coverage. So you could become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. Thanks for listening.
