I interviewed Somewhere Unknown In Indochina co-directors Asio Chihsiung Liu and Feng Ting Tsou at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. (Note that I’ll likely need to manually clean up this rough transcript as WhisperX seemed to be having some difficulties detecting speaker changes on this one.)
Here’s their artist’s statement:
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.458] 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 spatial computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. So in today's episode, I'm going to be diving into a piece that was featured within the college biennale. It's called Somewhere Unknown in Indochina. It's looking at different experiences that people have as being refugees and kind of being more in that liminal space of being in between your home and finding a new home. But also it's kind of like this really horrific experience that happened within the context of a ship where a number of people end up dying, like from 140 something to like 30 people that got stranded out in sea for a couple of months, had to resort to things like cannibalism and From there, the people that were rescuing them were denying people food and less to be able to pay for it and gold. And so, yeah, it just was like a really horrific type of experience to have to go through. And it was honored within this mural within the context of Taiwan. So there are some of these like stories of these refugees that were being lost or hidden. And so this is a way of kind of recovering some of those different stories and to find a way at the end to start to use 360 video to kind of have this poetic reimagining of what does it mean to have these ancestors of these people who are survivors of these refugees. So that's what we're covering on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with the team behind Somewhere Unknown in Indochina happened on Friday, August 30th, 2024. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:01:45.337] Asio Chihsiung Liu: I'm Ah Xiong, Liu Jixiong. I'm from Taiwan, and mainly I'm working as a documentary filmmaker. But this VR project is my first VR experience, and it is adapted from my interviewee's stories of my documentaries. And the topic of the documentary and the VR is a forgotten refugee camp in Taiwan. Because, as you may have known, Taiwan is not a member of the United Nations. So the records of the refugee camp are not included in the United Nations either. So basically, they are forgotten refugees in history. So that's one of the reasons that I have devoted myself in making the documentary. And then I and Feng Ting tried to make it a VR experience to reach more younger generation people. My name is Feng-Ting Zhou and I studied at USC. My background is photography and special effects and animation and interactive games and online games and of course filmmaking. This project is my first VR project as well but I know this area for almost 20 years already. But I never done any VR project before. But this is, for me, it's kind of very easy to step into this VR world. Because I already familiar all kind of idea, the concept, and the project, and the tools. and the sense of the VR, that kind of every aspect. So when Ah Xiong have released the project, it was originally a virtual museum, but I told him maybe we can start with this adapt story project to make it, to kind of introduce the audience we have this kind of story and by introducing the story and the people can maybe can concern his VR museum in the future yes
[00:04:09.836] Kent Bye: I know this project is a part of the College Biennale, where you're helping to learn more about virtual reality and have a cohort of other creators and makers. But maybe each of you could give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into working with VR.
[00:04:26.315] Asio Chihsiung Liu: I come from a traditional filmmaking background. I started my career as a cinematographer and a director in late 1990s. And then my debut short film was selected in Sundance Film Festival in 2000. And so the route for me to move to the VR background is, it is not a direct route for me. In the beginning, I was making such documentaries for the unguarded refugee camp. And then I found there was a mural in the camp. And then unexpectedly, I found one of the protagonists. in the mirror and she's a lady right now residing in Brussels. She contacted me in 2017 and then I flew to Brussels to interview her and knew that there are some invisible stories of her camp of her refugee boat. So in this 360 VR experience, it is not interactive, but we would like to expand the linear storytelling way to convey such a forgotten refugee story in a demolished refugee camp. So the key word is the camp was demolished in 2003. And before that, I had a dream about it. And that dream, there was a non-Cambodian girl who told me that there's such a refugee camp and nobody knows. And she asked me in English, have you ever been there? She seems to know that we didn't know each other's language. So she asked me in simple English. And then she told me the refugee camp is to be demolished next month. Next month, precisely. So I got shocked when I woke up from the dream. And I thought I talked to myself, though, although I at that time I was very young, nearly 20 or 30 something. I didn't feel any relationship with me. I was the refugee. I didn't feel related to such an issue. But I thought it is to be demonized next month. So I just have to ask. And then I did try to ask, and then I found that there were such a refugee camp in Penghu, Taiwan. And Penghu is a group of islands located in the Taiwan Straits.
[00:07:16.843] Kent Bye: And you live in Taiwan?
[00:07:18.263] Asio Chihsiung Liu: Yes, we live in Taiwan. But if we want to travel to the camp, we have to fly from Taipei. It is not located in the Taiwan main island. It is a group of offshore islands located in the Taiwan Straits.
[00:07:34.778] Kent Bye: OK. Yeah, and a little bit more context as to your background and your journey into VR.
[00:07:39.223] Feng Ting Tsou: OK.
[00:07:39.904] Asio Chihsiung Liu: My background is I started from photography. I work in a interactive game, that kind of stuff. It's very similar to a living book, the children or education, that kind of interactive software. Then I went to the U.S.A., started the movie and the special event and the animation. And then when I come back and I went, I work in the SOE, Sony Online Entertainment, to do the online game stuff. Then I kind of tired of the kind of career, you know, so I go back to do the some, I mean, freelance working for some animation or special effects for discovery program, that kind of stuff. And we have worked to project to each other for maybe a decade already, 10 years already. So he has a project before this one called Jing Liu Dao, yeah. Short film version of this VR. So we went to Pengfu for location scout and we talked about his idea about a refugee camp. So I bring up the idea, maybe we can, because the whole camp is demolished, there is no way we can build up on the side, because on the side it becomes a military camp already, right? Coast Guard. It's right now a Coast Guard camp. So there's no way we can rebuild the Rift Camp over there to make a film. So I think we can probably use VR, virtual reality, to make the whole Rift Camp back and tell the story back in the 1980s. Yes, that's the idea.
[00:09:32.885] Kent Bye: Maybe take me back to the moment you have this dream. Did you say it was around 17 years ago? In fact, there were three dreams.
[00:09:43.830] Asio Chihsiung Liu: And those three dreams could be traced back from 1995 to 2003. So there were two dreams in 1995. Then after seven years, that was the third one, and it was in 2003. So why there was such a seven-year gap between those dreams, right? Because I did nothing when I had such a dream in 1995. I did nothing.
[00:10:18.161] Kent Bye: When you first mentioned that you had someone come to you and say they wanted to have you make, was that the first stream in 1995? There was a Cambodian girl.
[00:10:27.168] Asio Chihsiung Liu: She was a victim of Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. I saw a photo album and her portrait was included in that photo album. So after I sing the photo album, after three months, I dreamt about her. She came to me in my dream and asked me, have you ever been there? And I didn't know what she's talking about. But it seems that this idea of something like refugee camp, something like that in that dream. But I didn't feel connected with it at all. So when I woke up, I just felt confused and didn't know what to do. So I did nothing. And it was in 1995, and she came to me twice. But since I didn't know what to do, I just forgot it. And then after seven years, in 2003, she came to me for the third time. But at this time, there was only her voice in the dream. But the only visible elements in the dream are broken umbrellas. And there is strong wind or monsoon coming, and the strong wind brings all of the broken umbrellas away. And those umbrellas vanish in the sky. So in our VR experience, I tried to combine different elements from my three dreams and try to combine some refugee stories. And then in the end, we have protagonists with three sisters. So the eldest sister was in Cambodia. And I adopted the background of their family. And they are a Vietnamese family born in Cambodia. And that maybe we will feel confused about the background. But in fact, the background can be traced back to the French colonial period. At that time, there are many people move freely between Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos. So that makes sense and still in today there are still some minority ethnic group and some of them are Vietnamese born in Cambodia and some of them are Cambodian born in Vietnam. So that adoption is based on such historical backgrounds.
[00:13:10.953] Kent Bye: Yeah, there's a lot of elements of this story that feel very destined to happen in some ways because somehow you hear about this refugee camp in your dream. You decide to go at some point, and you see a mural that's of a painting of a boat with lots of people on it, and it's about to get destroyed. So really kind of like one of the last artifacts of this really traumatic experience that a lot of these refugees went through was about to be destroyed forever. And in your dreams, you get a message that this refugee camp is about to get destroyed. And you have three dreams, actually, and then you weren't interested in, like, what changed for you to actually get interested and actually make it to the refugee camp?
[00:13:49.036] Asio Chihsiung Liu: At that time, in 2002, I was already a documentary filmmaker. Although I was a newbie filmmaker at that time, I felt some interest in the forgotten refugee in Taiwan and the world. So when she came to me for the third time and left me a message saying that the refugee is to be demolished next month, I felt that even I knew nothing about the camp. I just have to go. I couldn't explain why, but I felt that I have to. I just have to. Even though I didn't know what the camps were. But it was in 2003, but not until 2013 I developed it into a documentary project. Because even I went there, I knew nothing about it. And I couldn't find any clues to explore more and dig into the details of the refugee camp. Not until in 2012 I found some key interviewee and he kept some crucial notes and in fact he had written a very little tiny booklet about the camp and then I found the basic information of the camp. So that's when I started to make it into a real project to dig into it.
[00:15:22.068] Kent Bye: Is that how you found the protagonist, one of the survivors of this experience? It was through that booklet? Or how did you get in contact with one of the people who actually lived through it?
[00:15:31.332] Asio Chihsiung Liu: Basically, it was because of the internet. So I started my documentary project, and then if I found something, I posted it on my social media. And when I post it, I will post it with keywords in Mandarin Chinese in Taiwan and in English and in Vietnamese. So I think many of our interviewees found me with the English or Vietnamese keywords.
[00:15:59.188] Kent Bye: Yeah. Okay. So it sounds like then you made a 2D documentary, and then now we're kind of up to speed with this story where there's a mural that is depicting the scene. Did you cover that in the 2D documentary at all? Maybe just explain a little bit, how did you tell that same story in the 2D film?
[00:16:19.068] Asio Chihsiung Liu: In the context of the documentary, there are more explanations of the mural because that mural was painted in 1979 and it was originally used as a material of a so-called anti-communist political propaganda. Because at that time, the US established formal relationship with communist China. So that was when Jimmy Carter was in his office. So it was in January of 1979. So the boat of the Monroe came to Taiwan and came to Penghu in the end. of 1978. They came here in December. So it was in the middle of December that our government knew that the U.S. is to establish a relationship with communist China. So our government, and that was in the martial law period, they decided to adopt the refugee story to be an anti-communist political propaganda. So in the documentary, I will explain such a context in Cold War. But when we are making such a VR experience, we feel that we cannot omit such a historical background. But basically, we have to make the VR experience according to user experience. Of course, historical background is important, but we know that people are more interested in story. So that's one thing that I talked the most with Feng Ting. Minus the minimum, I have to minus the historical background in a minimum scale, but have our audience to focus on the life stories of our protagonists.
[00:18:24.662] Kent Bye: Yeah, because I can definitely see how you're using the medium of VR to tell the story in a powerful way that is difficult to translate into a 2D to have the same experience. And so I could see where you ended up, why you would need to continue to have the same story but explore it in a new way. And we'll get into that. But I want to bring you back in just to hear a little bit more. How did you first come across the story? Or how did you get involved in the project to start to develop this further?
[00:18:54.421] Asio Chihsiung Liu: Because I think this story, like Ah Xiong, he mentioned about because there's a lot of complicated history background and this history is already kind of forgotten for most of people. So I'm thinking we should kind of adapt the history to a kind of storyline and make it simple and for younger generation they can sense of back then their parents' generation, what kind of experience they have experienced, like their parents eat their relative meat, you know, the body for survival, you know. So nobody tell the story to their younger generation. So we want to use this kind of user experience and they can see by themselves. So they kind of immerse experience like, oh, my parents actually They went through all kinds of ordeal and they never told me before. And in some way they see the VR project and they kind of understand it. And that's my purpose.
[00:20:07.011] Kent Bye: Okay, so yeah, it sounds like that some of these stories, even with the destruction of the refugee camp, the museum that was there is destroyed, so there's parts of the history that was going away, and that with those Indo-China wars that were happening, there was a lot of these refugees and the stories of those refugees. So having it in virtual reality, it sounds like you're able to capture the story and tell it to future generations in a way to preserve that.
[00:20:31.981] Asio Chihsiung Liu: Yeah, exactly, yes.
[00:20:34.916] Kent Bye: And so, yeah, it's a story about the exile nature of refugees. They're already in a place of losing their home. And then you have yet another exile of going through such a traumatic experience that it becomes like a taboo that becomes even more difficult for them to find a home. And so maybe you could talk a bit about the context of the story of what actually happened on this one specific family that died. went through this traumatic experience and it's memorialized in this painting and so you dig in and give us a little bit more of a first-person perspective of what actually happened on the boat so yeah maybe you could just describe a little bit about the story of what happened on this boat
[00:21:16.034] Asio Chihsiung Liu: It was in 1998 in October originally there was 146 people boated in Saigon. But then when they fled Vietnam in the fourth day they had shipwrecked. And they got stuck at sea for more than two months. And then during that miserable trip, 112 people died at sea. And only 34 survived in that journey. And those 34 survivors were accommodated in the Penghu refugee camp. So our protagonist, the lady who's right now residing in Brussels, she was only 13 years old at that time. So originally the only survivors are the lady in Brussels and her brother. So here we did make some adoption because When they left the Penghu refugee camp, she went to Brussels with her elder brother. But her elder brother died very young, maybe four or five years after they arrived in Brussels. So in the story, there is a role of the narrator's younger brother. In fact, her younger brother's name is the lady in Brussels is her elder brother's name. So that's another element that we try to make our story more easier to be understood by the audiences. Sometimes we will modify some elements, but they are all based on true facts.
[00:23:11.772] Kent Bye: Yeah, so there's a bit of a conceit where you want to have a narrator, but embedded into the actual story of the piece, have a reason why she wants to tell the story. There's one of the younger sisters who was either too young or had like went unconscious for a while. And so she doesn't know what happened on the boat and she doesn't have any memories. And so you have an opportunity to actually describe what had actually happened on the boat.
[00:23:36.431] Asio Chihsiung Liu: Because the youngest sister was so young and she got unconscious when she arrived at the camp, so her perspective is quite similar to the perspective of our VR users. Basically, she knew nothing or she remembers nothing. So we think her perspective is quite similar to the perspective of the VR users.
[00:24:02.679] Kent Bye: Yeah. And to me, it was such a devastating, horrific story that we're kind of taken into like being shipwrecked at sea and then like they're starving to death. And so they one family member decides to sacrifice himself and to offer his body as food. And so then they are. having to become cannibals and eat the flesh of their family members to even survive and then they get rescued but then even the captain of the boat is demanding that they get the gold and going really slow and not feeding them so then even more people die so it was like surviving two phases of something that's really horrific and tragic and you know if you would have told this story in a film i don't think i would have had the same experience of like Even though there's nothing that I was facing any type of similar type of starvation or physical harm or anything, but I feel like just taking me through each of the steps of that story is a use of VR to give us this experience of having to go through the elements of that refugee crisis, even though, like I said, there's nothing that would compare to actually having to go through that, but it gave me kind of a twisting disgust in my stomach of... Not only that this happened, but also like when they get to the other side, that there'd be someone who would be so cruel to them after all this stuff that they had just been through.
[00:25:24.203] Asio Chihsiung Liu: Uh, one of my intention for people is to remind of the importance of, of their passage. I mean, sometimes when I read the stories of immigration or refugees, we might read a lot of stories focused on what they're doing right now. Maybe they're residing in the US, in Europe, or in Canada, or in Australia. Or some of the stories might focus on their hometown, their native land, where they came from. But I think our story will stand out when we are trying to focus on the passage. Yeah, the liminal space of going from one place to the next, yeah. Yes, yeah. So that's why we are telling the story in the perspective of the refugee camp. And when I made my documentary, I tried to find some related history of our neighboring refugee camp in Southeast Asia. But except for Hong Kong, for other refugee camp, their history are not officially written yet. That did surprise me a lot. Because I think even today we can see wars happen all over the world. I think people will remember things, so those stories will be recorded. But I found it was not true. So that did surprise me. So that's the very beginning idea when we tried to develop the idea of a virtual museum. So because Taiwan is at this time, we are not a country to receive refugees because we don't have asylum law or refugee law at this time. But we have such a forgotten history based on our refugee camp. So I think if we can focus on the passage for refugees, how they left their homeland and immigrated to a new country, By knowing more details of their passage, I think that people will feel more empathy of their journey and their life.
[00:27:42.574] Kent Bye: Love to hear some of your thoughts on reflecting on the use of VR to tell the story in the way that you did.
[00:27:50.799] Asio Chihsiung Liu: When Archon bring me the story, I think it is a really good material for the VR project. So I try to use the experience, the point of view to make the people, when the audience watch this story, they kind of become a part of the environment, part of the time to explain everything. I don't know if you feel that.
[00:28:16.061] Kent Bye: Yeah, well, I feel like if I would have seen the film in 2D, I don't think it would have hit me in quite the same way as it did. Because like at the beginning, you're in the refugee camp and you're waiting around a lot, you know, and you're kind of waiting for the story to progress. But there's also like being in refugee camp, you're doing a lot of waiting. And so there's a way that the pacing of which that you're trying to recreate this liminal exile space of being in between one home and the next and kind of being trapped in some ways and that then when you go into the actual experience of what happened on their passage of seeking asylum and then uh yeah i feel like i don't know i just it kind of hit me in a way that was more in my body than if i would have just watched it in a film
[00:28:57.062] Asio Chihsiung Liu: That's cool. Because the way we make this script, I told A-Sheng that every section I want a kind of psychology, like a mental state. Like this stage, I want people to feel like they're lonely or like they're boring or scary. The whole idea, every section has a main topic behind the scene. So I kind of control the audience mental. So you go through the film and you kind of gradually control by my purpose to your mental static. So you feel like the way you just mentioned about the feeling. Yeah, there's a kind of manipulate psychology. Yes.
[00:29:42.748] Kent Bye: Yeah, it was sort of like disgust in my stomach of like imagining what that must have been like to be there in a way that it put me in the scene in a way that I wouldn't have been as embodied into the story as I was. You know, and then there's, I don't know if there's how many sections or chapters, it felt like the first two thirds were around the CGI, the refugee camp experience, the transition of the being on the boat experience and explaining all that. And then eventually finding a home but facing different levels of discrimination or taboos because they had been a part of this horrific experience that included cannibalism so they had trouble getting assigned to a home once they did get to the refugee camp but then the last third it seems like you move into more of the 360 video where there's the survivor that's now a lot of time has passed she has a daughter and she's pregnant and then there's like these moments where she pauses and like looks at the camera and I'm like, why is the fourth wall being broken right now? What's happening? And then, you know, eventually you kind of like elaborate how there's this kind of ghost like future child presence that is being addressed as kind of like the future generations of this family that is being integrated into honoring what has happened in the past to their ancestors. But yeah, I'd love to hear you kind of elaborate a little bit more on this conceit of having one of the actors look directly into the camera, breaking the fourth wall and not really explaining it for a bit until eventually and at the end you get a lot more of like who this invisible character is that you're, as a viewer, you're kind of embodying.
[00:31:12.499] Asio Chihsiung Liu: That idea came from a real event too. So when the lady in Brussels texted me, she asked me, where's the mirror? How did you find the mirror? She contacted me with social media and she was using the ID of her dead sister. So the ID is called Phuong, just like the protagonist in our story. So when I talked that detail to Feng Ting, in the beginning I just tried to tell you what happened. And then he think that it can be an idea that we can amplify in our story. So in the end, we decided to stick with the idea of our protagonist's dead sister. So in the part one and part two, the perspective of the users is the perspective of Feng. And in the third part of the story, the users will know that Feng has actually died. She died in the refugee camp, so that's why the lady feels sad because her younger sister actually died in the camp. The phone is actually the user's phone as well. So in the third part, we intend to have her daughter look into the camera. So the audience might be wondering, why is she looking at me? The actress acts in a way that she's looking to a baby, a baby who is coming. So in the end, the audience will know that the third generation is coming and it is to be named after a dead soul passed away at sea. So that is one of my touching parts when I knew my interviewee. Although she survived, She kept telling me that if you want to make more story of the boat people story in the refugee camp, you have to remember those saw past at sea. So that's one thing that I would like to focus too. Even though they survived, they want people to remember there are more souls who have passed away at sea. We try to use the perspective of a ghost. And the ghost is the youngest sibling of the three sisters. She died in the refugee camp. But when the audience perspective is the ghost, the audience wouldn't know. So in the first part and second part of our experience, the audience will feel that he or her sister is talking to us, users. And because us users got unconsciousness when the users arrived at the refugee camp, so her elder sister is taking care of the users. So his or her sister is trying to recall what happened. of the boat happened at sea and because the youngest sister was so young so she couldn't remember anything when they moved from Phnom Penh to Saigon in late 1970s So we try to relate the perspective of the VR user with the youngest sister of the siblings. But in the third part of our story, that is another waking up for our protagonist. And the visual style turns into a live scene location shooting with real actresses. So that means it is the present time of our story. So in fact our protagonist just wakes up from her dream and in that dream she dreams of her youngest sister who passed away at the refugee camp. So that is the main story structure of the VR experience. Okay, the story, the end of the story, we want to make a sum up because the whole family and only the sister left alone and went to Belgium, right? So I used from the Bible this word that people can multiply in the end, you know.
[00:35:55.538] Kent Bye: So it says, what does Genesis 9-7 mean? It says, in you be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it.
[00:36:03.780] Asio Chihsiung Liu: In the end, they went through the old ordeal, and they found a new location, and they found a new family, and they grew their family back in other place. And I put their family in the end, and they can see their whole family, and they grew back, and they get a big family over in Belgium. And so people went through the whole story and they see the real family and they kind of hit you in the heart.
[00:36:35.170] Kent Bye: In the end, you see that you do have just a few survivors that come out of this, you know, 140 some people originally on the boat and then only a small percentage of those survive. Eventually, those who do survive then continue to, you know, have children. But there's so many people that When I saw that, it made me just really meditate on all the people that didn't make it and all those families that didn't exist. And so, yeah, I think you're trying to find ways of telling the story of refugees in a way that they're being exiled and sometimes they don't make it and It seems like throughout the course of creating this project, there was a lot of things coming to you in dreams and just kind of parts of the story that felt like the message of the story seemed to come to you in a way that almost like you feel destined to have to tell the story or things that you felt called, like they're unexplained things, so... Yeah. Now that you've finished, I'd love to hear any reflections now that you've been able to discover about the refugee camp, discover about the story and tell the story. What's it feel like now to have been able to capture this story in this virtual world that people can now experience?
[00:37:42.734] Asio Chihsiung Liu: I hope someday we can make the idea of virtual museum come true. By doing that, we can include more stories in the camp because the mural story is one of them and it was the most well-known one. But there are various kinds of unknown stories in the camp. So if we have a chance and we've got enough budget, I would like to include more bold stories in such a virtual museum.
[00:38:12.869] Kent Bye: How about for you? What's it feel like now to finish this project and reflect on what it all means?
[00:38:19.185] Asio Chihsiung Liu: It takes like two or three years to finish this project and we show the money and show the time and show everything as the independent filmmaking is always like this way. But finally we finish and kind of happy to present the film in the Venice Film Festival and hope we can have more, like Arjun said, more story we can develop in the future. Yeah, thanks.
[00:38:46.837] Kent Bye: Great. And finally, what do you each think is the ultimate potential of virtual reality, immersive storytelling, what that might be and the future of all this might mean in terms of where it's all going?
[00:39:01.450] Asio Chihsiung Liu: For me, a VR 360 VR is a new medium for me to tell stories. But I feel that as a filmmaker, it is necessary for me to use the tool to tell stories for younger generations who don't like to watch traditional linear documentaries and films. I feel like as a generation like us, we are responsible for that, to expand our technique to tell stories, to reach their tastes and their ways of experiencing stories. But at this time I am not very keen to such things like interactive things, but I'm still learning. So I hope someday I can get familiar with these techniques to tell stories and even for the future younger generation people will find that They can, by watching our stories, they can feel more connected to their parents or their ancestors' story. And I think it is a must for us to find a new way to communicate between generations. For me, I think for younger generation, they used to watch all the very show, visual, like a TikTok, that kind of stuff. So it's hard for them to watch the kind of traditional 2D, like a big screen film. Their main media is cell phones and iPhones. It's not a really big screen. They can just watch a movie or some kind of sitcom. So I think VR is kind of a new experience for them to intense their feelings, to see the visual stuff and they can feel the whole environment, the space. bring them the attention to focus on the story. If you can tell a good story, they probably can dig into it as well.
[00:41:19.780] Kent Bye: Great. Is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the, any final thoughts that you'd like to share to the broader immersive community?
[00:41:30.006] Asio Chihsiung Liu: Right now I'm in Europe and in Venice. But I still think that there are wars happening in Ukraine and in Africa. And there are also wars happening in Asia too. I hope someday there will be no war at all. But it seems that it's quite a very difficult thing to do. But if people can think more deeply about the war, I think maybe we will make this world a better place to live in the future. For me, of course, I want, since you guys listen to this broadcast, I want you have a chance to watch our film. And right now, we haven't put on the Oculus thing and that kind of platform. But in the future, after several months, we have some film festival we have put on the VR platform and people can download to watch it. And we have the Facebook website, the film website, and you can take a look.
[00:42:40.459] Kent Bye: Awesome. Yeah, I still love to capture these stories of just the process of creating pieces like this because, you know, the distribution and having them get out into the world in the past has been very difficult. I have hopes in the future that it'll be easier for people to see these types of works and unpack it because yeah that's it's always my preference for people to see the work and then hear about it but uh yeah i just wanted to also kind of share my own experience of this piece because there were some very unique moments that i feel like you know there's things that you're playing with that are kind of unveiling the affordance of vr of why a story demands to be told in an immersive way that just doesn't translate if you try to tell the story in any other medium i feel like this is the type of story that it's very well suited you know using the medium and its affordances to be able to to bring home the deeper points that you're trying to tell in terms of the types of the sorrows and traumas and pain that people go through this refugee exile process and you know being untethered from home and family and having to go through all these ordeals so yeah i feel like you're you're able to kind of capture even though it's like very low res graphics you know it's not like photorealistic or anything but it's still giving you the sense of what the experience was and how devastating it was to have to go through all that. At the end of the day, all that message comes, at least for me, through Loud and Clear. So I just appreciate you taking the time to tell these types of stories and to sit down with me today to help share a little bit more about your process and how it all came about. So thanks again for joining me here on the podcast.
[00:44:12.137] Asio Chihsiung Liu: Okay, thank you. Thank you. We feel appreciated. Thank you.
[00:44:19.212] 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.
