I interviewed Garden Alchemy co-directors Michelle Kranot and Uri Kranot at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.
Here’s the artist’s statement.
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.438] 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 in the future of special computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. So I'm going to be going through chronological order of the different interviews that I did at Vendors of Immersive, and the first interview that I did is with the team behind Garden Alchemy. Previously, they were animators that had a project that won at Fitness Immersive, Hangman at Home, a number of years ago. And now they're starting to get into more social experiments, social dynamics, trying to create these architectures for participation and connection. And so there's some performers that are there helping to guide folks. There's some VR experiences, and then there's some other interactable games people can play in order to connect to each other. So that's what we're coming on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with the team behind Garden Alchemy happened on Thursday, August 29th, 2024. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:01:11.709] Michelle Kranot: My name is Michelle and I work together with Uwe in the realm of XR, but other realms as well. We're here in Venice with an immersive experience called Garden Alchemy.
[00:01:25.211] Uri Kranot: And this is our fourth or fifth XR project. And I think it's our third time in Venice. And I think we started in 17. That was the first time that we started working with immersive platforms. Before that, we come from fine art and animation. That's our background.
[00:01:51.949] Kent Bye: Maybe you could give a bit more context as to your background and the ways that you've been applying that into your journey into exploring storytelling and art within the context of XR.
[00:02:01.774] Michelle Kranot: Well, like Uwe said, we come from animation. I'd even call it traditional handmade frame-by-frame animation. And that's also the world that we're exploring in this digital interactive sphere. So it's not only a starting point, but it's a thread through everything we do. And animation as a storytelling tool has weaved itself into every one of our projects, whether it's XR, whether it's screen-based animation. We also work with immersive, I'd call them big projection projects, participatory theater. We make music. Well, Uwe's a musician. I just... turn some knobs, but I consider all of these things a part of our art practice, but very much rooted in the animation is at the core of all the different outputs that we work towards.
[00:03:05.468] Uri Kranot: When you say traditional or old school, I think what you mean by that is that we really come from the material, the painting, the drawing, and the moving image for us as a way to tell stories. And our entering point into Immersive was a specific project that we worked on that was called Nothing Happens. which started as a film and in the middle of the process the whole idea was about passive witnessing and how we wanted to put the audience to be watching something together with a crowd and this whole bystander idea. animated and in the middle of the process we discovered that as much as we try to break the fourth wall and use cinematic tools the traditional cinematic tools you are still protected with the flatness of the medium and this is where thoughts of VR or immersive came in, and that was our first attempt to really break the fourth wall and put you inside. And it was successful in ways that we didn't... I mean, we were surprised, I think, by the... We had both a film and a VR project, and it seemed like that the VR project gave a closer feeling to what we intended to do, and that's where we got hooked.
[00:04:26.738] Kent Bye: Was there like an inciting incident or a catalyzing turning point that turned you on to investigate virtual reality as a medium to explore both in your artistic and storytelling practice?
[00:04:37.861] Michelle Kranot: Yeah, I think that was it. Nothing happens. It was an opportunity to explore this new way of engaging. And it is really fascinating. The shift between the linear sequential storytelling to the nonlinear spatial storytelling started with nothing happens. And then that was kind of the, like we said, it was the hook.
[00:05:06.405] Uri Kranot: It was like a discovery of a new toolbox with lots of new brushes that we can use. And that was exciting. But also trying to figure out what of everything we know about the moving image or the cinematic approach would still be valid in this medium and what calls for a new approach. We're still trying to figure this. Also, I think what was interesting is because of the novelty or the excitement around the medium, we also discovered the power of how easy it is to lure people. I mean, it's much harder today to get people excited over your new film or it seems like that if you do something in immersive, people will very easily jump into without even asking question. We understood that there needs to be much more responsibility involved in being an immersive creator because people are so naive in that sense.
[00:06:09.686] Michelle Kranot: I don't think that's true anymore. I think so. I think that, in fact, it's getting harder and harder to, like you say, lure people in. I also maybe want to respond to something, this question of the novelty. I think for me, the novelty also has to do with a kind of collaborative processes that immersive requires from us. Whereas traditional, I don't know if I like that word, traditional animation makers, but as animation filmmakers, we had total control over the experience from start to finish. We could basically make the whole thing. And often we had a team of people, but we were very much in control of the process, whereas here it requires different kind of collaborations and this openness. I guess it does come back to this idea of responsibility because you're not only responsible for the experience of your audience and your participants, but also responsible for the experience of your team and putting together the right kind of state of mind in order to make a piece of work. as opposed to other mediums is very unique, I think.
[00:07:25.180] Kent Bye: Yeah, well, I think the first encounter with some of your work that I saw was Hangman at Home that I saw during the pandemic. And I remember watching it and just be really struck by the hand-drawn nature of it, but also the use of VR to create this portaling effect where you could get that almost like breaking of the fourth wall i think at the end of the scene maybe the character looked at you in the eyes and it was just sort of like uh welcoming me into the story in some sort of way that felt more immersed but also i remember being just like surprisingly emotionally moved in a way that it took a turn or there was something that happened in the experience that also just was really emotionally moving And my understanding is that you took that piece that ended up winning Venice Immersive that year and then turned it into a multiplayer. So just wondering if you could say a few words about Hangman at home and then what that led to.
[00:08:18.695] Uri Kranot: So when we started Hangman, we knew that this is going to be a project with different outputs. It was a film and it was a single user VR. It was a multi-user experience and also a performance. That's what we planned from the start. So it was conducted in that way, unlike the projects that we've done before. but also we wanted to move forward with the toolbox that I was talking about and that was our most interactive piece where we tried to see how much you can engage the participant both in acquiring your position in the space it was very important for us to use the space and that your body and your movement give you the ownership by, as you said, you look and you're invited to pop your head into things, but also interaction in the sense of, you know, it's your decision. If you open a door, if you try something or you go this path, it becomes your individual path in the story. So break the linearity of things. So I think it was our most complicated project so far, right? Or is it this one? I'm not sure. It's just different.
[00:09:39.682] Michelle Kranot: They are very different. There is a simplicity with garden alchemy that we tried to, I mean, we learned from our mistakes, right?
[00:09:48.166] Uri Kranot: No, it's not learning from mistakes. I think what we've understood also is that we really try to use everything, all the new tools in The Hangman. And now with the garden, it's more like having the conclusion from that and going back to the basics of what it means to connect
[00:10:09.011] Michelle Kranot: The Hangman at Home was very much a research project. We wanted to see from the get-go what the different outputs would give us and how those have different impact. So the sequential animated film versus the single user VR in comparison to the multi-user VR Using the same materials, it's literally based on the same animation sequences and based on the same narration, how these different sets of tools impact audiences. And the main question in The Hangman at Home was about responsibility. And do you take kind of a collective responsibility when you're experiencing it as a multi-user? Does that change when you're experiencing it as a single user? What happens to that sense of responsibility or responsiveness when you're watching it as a film in a cinema? And for many people, again, during the pandemic, we were watching it on our laptops. And this idea of peeking into people's little windows sort of fed on that, you know, suddenly we're all on Zoom or whatever. It was kind of looking into people's lives in a way that they weren't always aware you were invited to. And as directors, we invited you into the scene, but you also were witnessing things that maybe you weren't supposed to. There was, I wouldn't call it voyeurism, but there was an awkward intimacy, which we were exploring at a time of pandemic.
[00:11:50.256] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I had a chance to see the single-player VR version, and I didn't have a chance to see the multiplayer, and I never could imagine what the multiplayer version would be or the social dimensions, but maybe you could elaborate on that a little bit and then lean into the social dimensions that you're exploring in Garden Alchemy and how maybe there were some discoveries that you made from Hangman at Home that then led you to this next project.
[00:12:13.373] Uri Kranot: That's a good question, because it's exactly what we were researching. Maybe it's important to say that we are researchers. This is our job. We are based in Denmark. We work within the animation workshop, which is a big school, part of academia in Denmark. We are positioned in a department of research and development, and our area is immersive storytelling. When we did Hangman at Home, the expansion was a four-player experience where we tried to keep the non-linearity but people will start the experience together, go on their journeys and end it together with a joint decision so the difference is big difference the main difference was that at the end of the experience if you remember you are invited to burn the scene and this time it was a collective decision which made it completely different you know you had a matchbox and you can just give it to each other and who's gonna do this and it becomes a completely different question it's not just about you and yourself and your responsibility it's also how does it work within the peer pressure or But what we discovered is that it was still quite a constructed story that you had to follow. And when we were watching or observing, we could definitely see that people were very interested in interacting with each other. And we didn't give them enough space to do that. We were very much focused on the story that was so important for us to tell. And it wasn't a failure, but it was a conclusion that the medium calls, at least in our perspective, calls for something else. And this is what we're trying to do in the garden. So we're drawing back from the constructed storyline or storytelling. And it's more about creating the space for people to coexist in a virtual world that we've created for them and give them the opportunity to connect on different grounds than in reality.
[00:14:28.937] Michelle Kranot: We've been very fortunate at the animation workshop to have the opportunity to look into different kinds of multi-user. And one of the opportunities we had was to dive deeper into participatory theater. So if The Hangman at Home is very much a cinematic piece that's adapted for a multi-user XR experience, The Garden, or what we call Garden Alchemy, is this meeting of participatory theater in a digital, animated, immersive space. So taking not necessarily a step back from the cinematic storytelling, but really embracing the theater and sculptural spaces rather than the linear narratives.
[00:15:21.288] Kent Bye: Yeah, I was really struck by going through this experience and how playful it was for me to play with the blocks or do collaborative games. It felt like there were a lot of invitations for me to have novel interactions with other people in the experience. And it reminds me a lot of Priya Parker's book, The Art of the Gathering, where she talks a lot about how do you gather people? What's the invitation? How do you set the context for what the purpose of the meeting is? And I think that's a lot of what you're trying to do with the experiential design elements of this piece. Maybe just talk me through a bit of your process for how you were trying to architect these different social dynamics in Garden Alchemy.
[00:15:58.280] Michelle Kranot: So I think that bringing in performers into the room allows us to really explore this idea of connectedness and humans in space and how to create those invitations, invitations for connectedness. And these very analog playful games, you get to play not necessarily in a childish way, but in a way that is reminiscent of the freedom you had as a kid to really just look and be and explore a space in a different way. These kaleidoscopes are kind of like these magical instruments. that we're so fascinated with all the incredible things we can do in VR or these different immersive particles, particle systems, but actually it's all around us all the time. And working with people whose main research question is human, what is our humanness? So if you walked into Garden Alchemy now, with the mindset of really be open, the main question you will encounter is what does it mean to be human? And I know that that sounds really big, but what we did was kind of breaking it down into these smaller elements of that. There's kind of existential questions that are little games, little bite-sized interactions. that are happening outside of the virtual world and frame the bigger questions about what it means to share responsibility for a space. I like the word stewardship. In a way, garden alchemy is an ecological piece, but we're not looking at the environment in a very classical sense. But what does it mean to share an ecosystem between us? And the participatory theater or the performance aspect of holding the space for that is really, really important. And taking the time to slow down isn't something that we're naturally inclined to. So there's some steps and there's some strategies involved.
[00:18:16.928] Uri Kranot: That was actually the discussion we had when you had lots of questions. How long is the experience? Will I be able to... Yeah, exactly. And I tried to calm you down and say, maybe it's not the best idea that you try to rush through hours and then run to the next one because we're actually trying to do the opposite. And it was actually nice to get the mail back from you and saying, oh, I was hoping I'm not offending anyone because I understand the rushness of this venue. But it was nice to hear that you actually got to the bottom of what I was trying to say and that this calls for a different approach for sure.
[00:18:57.441] Kent Bye: Yeah, it definitely was a vibe shift for me to settle in and just be more present. Part of the context for what had happened right leading up to that was that Free Your Head was initially listed as 55 minutes. And in the calendar, it was listed as 15 minutes. So then they eliminated all the onboarding time of all the projects. So what was reported to Viva Ticket was not what was on the websites. And so I was like panicking saying, oh my gosh, is this gonna be a complete disaster? Like, did they completely, like, why did they eliminate all the onboarding time? So I had a five minute break between the end of your experience and then my next experience. And then, you know, for Free Your Head, the difference was, you know, 40 minutes that they had just erased. So that was part of my existential panic attack that I was going through in that moment. But In Your Peace was the exact opposite of someone who was wondering, like, how are we gonna get to the next place in the next time? And so when I entered in the piece, I was trying to really settle in, breathe, and also I went into VR first, and I get transformed into floating petals, and then I can't actually see my body. I can see other people's bodies, but I can see my hands. And so I sort of deduced that, oh, they must be seeing my body, and I can see that there's these other people there. But it actually took one of the participatory theater actors to take my hand and architect a social dynamic between interacting with And I don't know if that would have happened without the person there, or it kind of gets to what degree can you surrender completely to the technology to create interaction designs to facilitate these social dynamics. And then there's always going to be an incompleteness to that. And so how can the theater actor augment that? So yeah, I'm not sure if that's come up in your own design practice of like, how much do you rely upon the technology to do it? And then how much are you going to rely upon the participatory actors to kind of facilitate different group dynamics?
[00:20:44.195] Uri Kranot: Should I answer that?
[00:20:46.197] Michelle Kranot: It's a very delicate balance, and it's part of what we're exploring.
[00:20:51.141] Uri Kranot: And we're testing it on different crowds. So we could definitely see that when you have a room full of teenagers, there's something in the energy, if they know each other especially, there's something in the energy in the room that is very easy for the technology to move forward, to trigger the whole thing that we've planned for them. On the other hand, when you're in a room full of strangers, when there's some kind of rigidness, then it might get harder to, let's say, accomplish or unlock the stages of connectivity. And this is where we try to find the mid-range, so it's not too hard but not too easy. Otherwise, if it just happens without your intention, then we missed the point. But it's true that because it's on the average, then we need the assistance or the interference of the performer to acknowledge or to be observant of what's going on in the room. and give the time. I mean, it didn't happen. I'm sure it didn't happen immediately. She probably let you explore and see. But after a certain amount of time, when you feel ripe, ready to be connected, and if it didn't happen, then you would be gently led towards the connection opportunity. So that's what happened there, I think.
[00:22:13.490] Kent Bye: And so coming from an animation background through XR, it's moving more and more toward these architectural participatory theater type of interactions. And so I'm wondering if there's other either scholarly resources or other inspirations that you took for how to expand your own animation practice into more of an interdisciplinary social architecture or participatory theater practice.
[00:22:39.231] Michelle Kranot: That's also a really good question. In fact, that's part of what the research paper we're working on now. That is the question. And I think that it's important to experience as many different things as possible to feed your practice and really opening up to different disciplines and different practices. ways of looking and being in the world. So participatory theater has been a big one. And I feel like as a person who's trained as an animator, it's a really big shift. In traditional animation, we do something called storyboarding, where everything is meticulously planned before you enter production. And this storyboard or animatics, very clear planning was something that's foreign to participatory theater. So there was a wall that bumped up against starting new collaborations. But being audience to those kind of experiences has really informed the work that we do. So I think that has been a really big influence. And I think the context of installation work that supports either a screen-based piece or a theater piece has always been really inspiring. I could refer, for example, to the works of William Kentridge, who's always been a really big influence. And he, in some circles, I don't think he considers himself an animator, though he works with animation, but he's managed to construct theatrical performances that are installation-based using animation as a component that is often really unlocking the storytelling. So that's a really big inspiration.
[00:24:28.310] Kent Bye: Yeah, and just wanted to document a few other of my kind of a trip report from your experience because there was some really beautiful like interactions that I had with one of the participatory theater actors who was telling me about her passions around the kaleidoscope and showing me flowers and lights and it just made me feel like a kid again. It was real nice transporting me into like a whole other mode of thinking about play in an installation piece like this in a festival context and kind of experimenting with, you know, these different tools that are there with either signs to have like these ways of communicating or collaborative poetry or poetry by yourself And so yeah, it's certainly a boundless number of things you can start to add in there And so I'm just curious like what's next for the garden alchemy?
[00:25:17.794] Michelle Kranot: I think that what surprised the performer so much was how important the VR experience was because if they're interested in human connections and being present and how does it make sense that we all put on headsets, right? It seemed like the most alienating thing we could do, separating people in these other worlds of digital spaces. And then I feel that we managed to prove a point to people who were very, very skeptic about the pivotal role that XR or this particular experience that we've crafted can give this connectedness, this being human, and how those different mediums inform each other.
[00:26:03.823] Uri Kranot: and also try to connect in very simple means the analog world to the digital high techy world. So we're using in both worlds, we're trying to use very simple means of dialogue. And I think what I commented before that in this piece, we're actually trying to drop back from all the very highly interactive elements and go for very simple things. and try to dig deeper into the essence rather than the show of... Our programmer would say that nothing of what we've done is simple.
[00:26:45.789] Michelle Kranot: We just want it to feel simple. And these very complex particle systems for multiple people, and as every participant that we add to it, there's the levels of complexity in terms of programming. sort of expand exponentially, but the fact that it is hand painted and that it feels easy, that it feels natural, that's the key to the simplicity.
[00:27:15.359] Kent Bye: So one of the surprising things about Garden Alchemy in this year's selection is that it's in the context of the College of Biennale. And you're both creators who have previously won the top prize at Venice. And typically, when I see the College of Biennale projects, it feels like they're up and coming projects that are being incubated, but you're from the animation background, and you're kind of expanding out into this new context of participatory theater and XR. And so I'm just wondering how it came about to work with the college biennale, but also like what were some of the things that you took away from being a part of that program?
[00:27:46.024] Michelle Kranot: We're still considered young talent.
[00:27:49.205] Uri Kranot: I think when we applied to the college, I think there was an interview or a correspondence with Michel and he said that he's flattered that we applied, but do we feel that that's the right place, you know, because maybe we have the knowledge or, you know. And we actually applied because we were trying to do something else. We were entering a ground that was very terra incognita for us. And that was the reasoning. I think otherwise we would probably choose a different path. I think that was really, at least from our perspective, it was very helpful because we met, even if we met people that were coming from different schools, not necessarily from the performing arts, but from, I don't know, XR design and these kind of things. It was complementary knowledge that we were missing. And this is where that was the starting point, actually, for this project.
[00:28:50.427] Michelle Kranot: I think for me, the starting point was sort of having this beginner's mind. No, we don't know what we're doing, and isn't that great? And being in a peer learning situation was very, very healthy. One of the things that I took away is, Uwe and I lead a program called AnyDocs, and we have a lab, animated documentary lab. So it's structured similarly to how the Biennale College is structured. So for us to be participants in a lab was really very informing. And for us to come in a situation where we can be generous with our time and with our energy and have group dynamics that supports that generosity... You're not just coming to the college to produce your own project. You're coming there to be a part of this community. Sharing knowledge. Yeah, and make friendships. So for us to also be presenting as part of the Biennale College together with other people who've been through this process with us is very reassuring. There's a familiarity that is comforting, but also allowed us to push ourselves out of our comfort zone. If you feel safe enough to try new things, you might fail, you also might discover new ways of doing things and that is the place in our journey we're on.
[00:30:22.972] Uri Kranot: It's also the difference between producing and researching. And I think this is a shift that we had to do by very much being producing all the time. We've been quite active in the last couple of years, but we shifted into the research brain. And this is what we're trying to do. We're asking questions and we allow ourselves to fail.
[00:30:46.262] Michelle Kranot: Again, that's a privilege because we have jobs. But it's a privilege that we definitely enjoy and share. So we see that as part of our responsibility. Yes, we produce work and we're showing work, but we're also creating opportunities for others.
[00:31:04.497] Uri Kranot: we're also showing an unfinished work this is a work it's a prototype basically we are in production we're planning to be finished in march 25 it was just a very good opportunity to test and to see it's not finished but live testing yeah exactly we're trying it on the people and get the conclusions
[00:31:27.947] Kent Bye: Great, and finally, what do you each think is the ultimate potential of immersive media and what it might be able to enable?
[00:31:40.352] Michelle Kranot: I'm taking a long pause. Potential. I do believe in it. I think that we started, we thought that the potential was infinite, that this was going to change the world, that it was already changing the world, that the power of immersive media was in the hands of artists and in the cultural sphere. could basically save us from the destruction of our planet and save humanity.
[00:32:18.751] Kent Bye: Yeah, you were thinking that? I believed that.
[00:32:20.553] Michelle Kranot: I didn't believe that.
[00:32:22.555] Kent Bye: No.
[00:32:23.896] Michelle Kranot: And then there's disillusionment. And then there's seeing the collapse of these ecosystems that we've been building up. And seeing how unsustainable, in many ways unsustainable, whether it's venues, you know, the business model that doesn't exist, the artists that never have enough support, the venues that can't push enough people through. There's so many limitations. But I still think that we need to hold our own. The evil forces that are taking over all of the platforms, what you call immersive platforms, I think that we need to counter that with content that is meaningful. So we have to continue to do that. And disillusionment isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does require us to band together and try to see this as a collective. We have to work more closely with venues and artists need to be enabled to work more closely together so that we have a support system. the technology that isn't accessible to so many, those who have access. I think we need to come together and make sure that this becomes available. So, yeah, I started naively hopeful, and I've been through the ups and downs of it. And I think if I sort of circle back or wrap up in terms of garden alchemy, I think that the access that it allows is the visibility it has is really important because it can potentially, when it's done, it can take in really a lot of people. And people in VR, people outside of VR, we do projection mapping, live music, live animation, and, you know, at least 10 users in VR and in and out and sort of make it kind of all family experience. I think that these kind of experiences open up opportunities for others.
[00:34:33.200] Uri Kranot: Yeah, I agree. I think maybe looking at what had happened in the last 10 years and the way we've changed, I think right now I'm in a place where I look at these alternative realities and see the toolbox and think, that maybe the best use that we can have out of these opportunities is to go into alternative realities, learn something there and bring it back to the reality, to our world and not escape to alternative realities because our world is really shitty. At least that's my motivation. And I think people need to think about it as well. It shouldn't be a place to escape to. It should be a place to bring something from in order to create a change in reality.
[00:35:33.144] Kent Bye: Great. Is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the broader immersive community?
[00:35:38.772] Uri Kranot: I think there was something I was talking with a lot of people here because, you know, creators are here on the floor. We are talking about the ecosystem of what we do because it seems that we're all facing quite big difficulties in reaching audiences, sustainability, support, all these kind of things. Here in Venice it's such a big celebration of works. It's a big event for all of us but we also need to look at the day after it ends where it shouldn't be such a big drop from this big festivity into the abyss of nothingness and what's next and how can I reach So I think we should be more proactive in creating a stronghold of knowledge to help each other understand the roots and possibilities, share it, and then help each other move forward.
[00:36:38.151] Michelle Kranot: That's nice.
[00:36:40.401] Kent Bye: Great. Well, Uri and Michelle, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast to help break down a little bit more into the journey into garden alchemy. And yeah, I feel like the intent of the piece to find new ways of connecting to people. I've definitely felt that. One other memory that I have is. when you're in VR and it kind of slowly fades out to have like the reality overlaid and there's this moment where the perfect combination of what I've seen of the architecture of someone's body overlaid onto their body. I really love that moment and it was for me too brief because it was like oh wow this is such a moment that I just want to have linger because it was something so beautiful around being in that liminal space and then coming back to the physical reality and seeing where those two met. And then it just kind of faded out almost too quickly for me for what I wanted to have. So yeah, that was one moment that I really was struck by of like, wow, there's something really powerful around mixed reality in the social context of facilitating these kind of like interactions and then changing the context by changing what you see around you. So anyway, just a really beautiful piece and very much looking forward to see where you continue to iterate and experiment and take it in the future. So thanks so much for joining me here on the podcast.
[00:37:48.536] Michelle Kranot: Thank you. Thank you very much. This was really fun. Good questions. Thanks.
[00:37:54.478] Kent Bye: Thanks again for listening to these episodes from Venice Immersive 2024. And yeah, I am a crowdfunded independent journalist. And so if you enjoy this coverage and find it valuable, then please do consider joining my Patreon at patreon.com slash voices of VR. Thanks for listening.
