I interviewed Domenico Singha Pedroli about Another Place on Saturday, November 15, 2025 at IDFA DocLab in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.
Music: Fatality
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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 and the future of spatial computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. So continue my series of looking at different experiences at IthadocLab 2025. Today's episode, we'll be covering a piece called Another Place, which is a part of the Spotlight program. So this is an immersive experience where you're kind of walking through the streets of Paris, see all these kind of shadowy characters. And so you're kind of getting the sense of these are people from the main protagonist's past. It's a transgender character from Thailand. And so she's walking down the street and you see some more at the beginning of documentary footage of her. And there's ways that she said something on social media and she basically gets exiled. And so she's in France, but kind of remembering her previous life as she was in Thailand. And so there's certain moments as you're walking through the streets of Paris that you kind of go down these alleyways and eventually you kind of get into this more like flying dream logic thing where you kind of go back and span space and time and that you are able to kind of go back into the memories of this main protagonist character where she's able to go back home and revisit her home and all of her cats that she had to quickly abandon. And so Yeah, it's kind of a very spatial, world-building, architecturally designed piece by Domenico. We'll be kind of talking around his process as he's designing this piece called Another Place. So we'll be covering all that and more on today's episode of The Voices of Air podcast. So this interview with Domenico happened on Saturday, November 15th, 2025 at IFA Doc Lab in Amsterdam, Netherlands. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:01:56.831] Domenico Singha Pedroli: So I'm Domenico Singapedrolli. I'm a filmmaker and artist from Switzerland, but also from Thailand and Italy. I'm currently living in Paris, and I'm here at IDFA, IDFA DocLab, to present as a Dutch premier the work, the immersive work, Another Place.
[00:02:16.408] Kent Bye: Great. And maybe you could give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into the space.
[00:02:21.348] Domenico Singha Pedroli: Yeah, so actually I can confidently say that it was a kind of a long journey because I studied actually architecture, just a bachelor. And then after four years of study, I realized that I was more interested in moving images. And since that moment, I thought that, OK, maybe to explore this kind of side, I should go to Thailand because, you know, there is... a more energetic and environment to create especially like when you're right at the beginning without much of the financing so that's basically what i did i moved to bangkok in 2019 and since then i you know being loyal to the process pick your camera and shoot until i build up a sort of portfolio of works and afterwards in 2022 i applied to this school in northern france called lefrenois which is basically like a new media and also audiovisual postgraduate institute that basically financed two projects. And one of the kind of assignments they had in the second year was to use new technology. And that's where I choose to make a VR project because there was 2023 and, you know, there was a lot of... talk around it you know Meta announced the year before like this kind of metaverse and so I was really for me it was very important to kind of be attentive to the discourse and to participate and to understand how it how it is done
[00:03:57.513] Kent Bye: It's interesting to hear your own journey and how it's going between the geographic places of France and Paris and Thailand, because in your piece, you're also kind of exploring those themes kind of being fused together in a certain way. Can you elaborate a little bit more on your relationship to both France, Paris and Thailand? And, you know, what was it around these places that you wanted to also feature them within your work?
[00:04:22.577] Domenico Singha Pedroli: Yeah, so I mean, that's a very good question because I think that's one of, let's say, one of the keys of understanding, let's say, my artistic language. Because again, growing up both in Switzerland and in Thailand, like throughout the summers, it would be back and forth. Like for me, it was always... I'm kind of wired to always see multiple sides of the same things. And when I started to make movies or be more engaged with storytelling, for me, I was interested in character that would were embodying kind of more geographies, more places and, you know, this kind of also movement between places. So in France, I got in touch, I became close with the community of Thai political refugee, which it's kind of, let's say, a big hotspot there because they have a good, let's say, immigration policy and exile program. And so I made two projects. One project is called Au Revoir Siam, Goodbye Siam, which is, again, like a multidisciplinary project that follows the whole community, but especially one as, again, we go back to his hometown and we kind of explore how basically he has been forgotten because he has been in France for so many years that... people in his hometown that are now all like forget him and but in this case with another place was a younger character a transsexual political refugee around my age i think when we did it she was 28 so very young but already going through something very powerful and strong and life-wracking And yeah, basically the whole project is basically this roaming around these spaces, this desolated Paris that is kind of devoid of her memories, but suddenly get filled up with all these kind of fragments that kind of are regurgitated from Thailand and little by little we kind of reach there and we kind of get to the point where we enter into her room in which again it's really like her bedroom that we kind of reconstructed through images to kind of yeah make it
[00:06:53.297] Kent Bye: Yeah, it's interesting to think around the grammar of film and cinema and how it has different editing techniques and that a lot of this film is like a single take of sorts where you're going through a lot of spaces, some of them liminal spaces because they're more like passageways to get to something else, but these dark alleyways, but you're basically taking us on this spatial journey of So having a background in architecture made a lot of sense to me when you said that because I could really see a focus of the space and the environment as a key part of the experience. And so there's a lot of environmental storytelling in that sense of just the spaces, but also narrative parts that are also tied in there. But just curious to hear a little bit more around your transition from studying as architecture but wanting to create more moving images. And I felt that this piece was really like... using the medium of vr to kind of take me on this spatial journey that wouldn't really be possible in any other medium so just curious to hear a little bit more around this kind of developing of that grammar that you wanted to to use in this piece yeah so i mean uh i think like there are many kind of architectural works for me i also detach myself from architecture because i like uh
[00:08:07.742] Domenico Singha Pedroli: Let's say an image of a building that an architect would kind of show you to you would be always like a building once it's kind of hyper polished, new, without any kind of none of the texture of the daily life. Me, since I was a student, I always wanted to see the texture, the chairs that is not that it's a bit broken and, you know, these kind of layers of life on top of it. So again, space, I mean, it's again, I mean, it's our wall, windows, but again, it's also the political value of the space and how it kind of, and the memories behind space. So again, and these elements are more intangible, let's say, they're less, let's say, visual, but they... kind of part of creating this kind of experience of motion of because also like we forget sometimes that also architecture themselves like that the architecture is also movement and that's a kind of a key quality of cinema like it's movement sometimes through the edit but also especially in this case which is a long take like we really live through the space in motion So, and eventually like this film was, I mean, because I think the storytelling is very mental, that basically like what we see, it's mostly spaces, but I think it becomes actually more than that because... which is very difficult actually to translate in still images. I think still images, a person might kind of confuse them as architectural rendering, but I think because it's very difficult to convey... the voice of the character, her emotion and her kind of sense of loss, which is built in the work through time, through like all this kind of miscommunication, lack of feedbacks of the character, the shadows and so on.
[00:10:15.305] Kent Bye: Yeah, I'm wondering if you could elaborate on this transgender character that's being featured. We're seeing some of her images of her home, her cats, and we see images of her at the very beginning, and then You kind of embody her in a way, so you're walking around as this character from the first-person perspective. And so I'm just curious to hear a little bit more around the development of this character and how you came around this kind of asylum-seeking context of... being in exile and trying to uh find comfort or home or like even shelter there's kind of a wandering that's happening so but just here's to hear a bit more around the the this kind of development of the character you're cinematically representing but also if it's you know based upon like an uh sounds like it's based upon like an actual character that uh just the process of how you developed the the journey in the story that you're featuring here
[00:11:14.133] Domenico Singha Pedroli: Oh, no, actually, like, this is a completely real character, so it's basically Renée, that it's also, like, I use her real name, and basically, I mean, it was very delicate, but also very, let's say, the most challenging, let's say, part of the process was really... Kind of developing the storytelling along with her kind of testimony, along with getting to know her. Because I got to know her like some months, like a year before when I was shooting this documentary about political refugees. So I interviewed many people. all the members of the community, let's say, or those who were kind of more at ease with it. And I also interviewed her, but at the end, I didn't manage to put it in the final cut of the previous work because I felt that her personality was too ambivalent and it would kind of break also... the expectation of the other work. I knew that I needed a special treatment with this personality, with this person, and I thought that, okay, because I'm doing a VR experience, and a VR experience in the kind of most reduced terms, so a single-player VR experience, I said, okay, maybe, you know, the project could mostly be like this embodiment of her. And so that's why in the film, at the beginning, there is basically, I wouldn't say, there is this basically transition from the language, from the cinematic language, because we are seeing her being interviewed on a screen, suspended in the space, in the building. And then slowly we are becoming like, okay, we are hearing the voice and, you know, We are understanding that this is the language of VR, of video game, of being in first person and reacting to environment as such. So... once this kind of point of view was established was really about, okay, how do we, how do I get the audience really feel like, like to convey like all the kind of ambivalent emotion that kind of struck me. So it's, for example, like... She would always talk very easily about her exile. Like, okay, I've been exiled because I criticized the monarchy. And that's it. And if I were asking her, like, are you sad about it? Do you miss home? She was not giving me those dramatic responses. She never cried in front of me because of... her sadness but again like we know that it must be incredibly sad and displacing to not be able to go home anymore and so from all our like various conversation like it uh i really tried to build the narrative around it so for example the presence when she really told me that what she misses the most are the cats that really became like an important like uh the key element in the storytelling that say, OK, like, you know, I would like if she told me that she would be missing her family, I will try to maybe find a way to so that the whole journey bring her to her family or her friends. But no, she said the cat. So I have to find a way to kind of to build the dramaturgy in order that the cat give this kind of feeling of home, of coziness and fulfillment.
[00:15:05.908] Kent Bye: Yeah, and as she's walking through the city, there's this mechanic where she's holding a phone that serves as a way of also telling a part of the story as it unfolds, but the light is on on the phone, so that as the light is shining, you actually at some point realize that there's these kind of shadow characters that are recurrent throughout the piece, where there'll be a bench that's on the street, but then when you shine your light... On the phone, the virtual phone that's in your kind of NVR, then you get revealed this kind of silhouette of this character. And so it gives a sense of like this kind of shadowy memory characters. Or maybe you could just describe what you were trying to create with these kind of shadow characters that are featured throughout this piece.
[00:15:53.689] Domenico Singha Pedroli: Yeah, so I mean, these shadows are kind of, it's what, let's say, these are the human presence, let's say, in the work, which are some of the least human we can imagine, because again, they are They're in between silhouettes and projected shadows, so sometimes they're very distorted to the point that we can hardly recognize them. But now I will go to a more technical term. Throughout all these shadows, we also put to each of them a sound source. So each one would kind of communicate a certain gesture, a certain presence. So there's a person maybe crying a little bit afar, another one sleeping, another one listening to the music. So for me, this was in a way, like also metaphorically speaking about the experience, like the urban experience of... of like those who are outsiders or those who again like the spirits that inhabit like urban environment that we are not noticing and for me it's like because in her position of being displaced of being let's say a wandering spirit by its own she would be able to access to this kind of shadows but also like talking about the shadow it's kind of open up like to a kind of a let's say wider and more spiritual framework of the work because actually the conception was not exactly like taking her story and making it into a VR piece but it was okay I want to create an afterlife journey I want that the VR becomes this because one of my let's say one of my One of the few experiences that I watched that really struck me was this work by a Thai filmmaker, A Conversation with the Sun by Apichapong Varesettakul. It's a very complex 30-people VR multiplayer experience, almost performative. This aspect of the journey, afterlife journey was very important. So I imagine that, okay, in the afterlife journey, in all kind of writing, like Christian writing, Buddhist writing, there are always like others in form of spirits. So maybe there was a kind of a, let's say a fragment or a debris of this beginning idea.
[00:18:25.333] Kent Bye: Yeah, and so what's the name of the character or the name of the person you're featuring? Yeah, Renee. Renee? Yeah. So the main character, Renee, as she's walking through the city, you get little bits of her backstory where she's seeking asylum, she's been denied, and she made a comment on Facebook about the government, and she basically got exiled. So she made some... post around the monarchy was critiquing, uh, critical of the monarchy and gets basically kicked out of the country. Um, so she's in this kind of in between liminal space of exile and not really having a place to be or a home, um, in this being a stranger in a strange land. Um, and so she is on these, uh, like, so, and she's, uh, she's got a phone, but she doesn't have internet service. And so she's kind of like looking for these hotspots. And so as she's walking through, uh, She's wanting to do certain things and blocked, but then eventually when she does get connectivity, then she's on Grindr trying to find hookups, but unclear as to whether or not she actually just needs a place to stay over the night or if she's looking for a deeper connection or wanting to find some sort of connectivity. So you get this sense of like... as you're walking through the space, you get these intermittent notifications on the phone that are also pushing the story forward, which I thought worked really quite well in the way that we spend so much of our time on the phone and that there's kind of a portals into other aspects of the deeper story that may be difficult to otherwise really portray. So I'm just curious to hear a little bit more around this development of the use of the phone throughout the course of the piece to be able to be a delivery mechanism of parts of the story.
[00:20:12.096] Domenico Singha Pedroli: Yeah, so again I will kind of try to go back to the beginning and again because I approached, let's say, this VR project in a very, let's say, theoretical way or to try to break down the medium, one of the elements that I thought was very specific to the medium that cinema, for example, doesn't have is the interactivity. Once me and my small team decided to have interaction, we said, OK, what kind of interaction? To kind of be in line again with my cinematic background, I wanted, okay, we keep it simple and maybe there is just a light. We are kind of illuminating the environment. And again, it's a very simple interaction but can be very satisfying or interesting. So we tried, okay, maybe like a candlelight or maybe just a more abstract, let's say, almost like a firefly. So we can move this kind of golden bulb. But then... And at some moment they would say, why don't we use just a phone? Why using a candle? People have been using it like 200 years ago. Now when you need to light your way, 90% of the time you will use your phone. But that was kind of also challenging for me because it would kind of add this kind of a very... uncinematic apparently uncinematic element like the screen of a phone and was like okay I mean are we sure it's not gonna be too distracting because all the environment is very dark and moody and suddenly like you have Google Maps that okay maybe it kind of breaks too much the attention but starting from there we try to kind of add this element of yeah of like It really became a very important storytelling element to make action happen because the environment would by itself not have too many actions so we needed something more punctual that would pop up but at the same time It kind of opened up to a series of, let's say, feelings that I recognize that everybody has, like, you know, this fear of not being connected to the Internet or like losing yourself in a city and you don't know where you're going. And all this kind of, ah, okay, and this adds up to this kind of displacing experience. and also because I mean this is more in terms of writing but also in terms of content like I or let's say about the character again it's I realized that All her life kind of was built around her communication through the smartphone. So, you know, maybe she would kind of, you know, all her emails or her connection with the family back home was drawn to this screen. So I said also this device is part of her life, let's say.
[00:23:39.008] Kent Bye: Yeah, there's a piece that was here at the Doc Lab a number of years ago by Ali El-Sami. He's an Iranian virtuality and immersive artist. And he had a piece called Nerd Funk. And in that piece, he is featuring a phone that you're holding in your hand and that you are kind of both watching other videos but also taking pictures. And so it gives you – for me, it was this moment of like – realizing how much that we have our own expectations of what it means to look at our phones and smartphones and use them, like for most of us, we carry them around with us all the time. And so it feels very natural to kind of start to use the affordances of that within VR, but to also add it in a way that gives us this experience of being disconnected and not having any connectivity but then also this hope for connection and romantic or other feelings of partnership or home and then at some point the battery runs out and so then now you're kind of cut off and then you kind of use that as an opportunity to kind of enter into another altered state where there's a turn in the piece that allows you to kind of go in this otherworldly space that Yeah, so I'm just curious to hear any reflections on the use of the way that we use our phones and technology in a way that can create even a deeper immersion throughout the piece and then how at a certain point it kind of marks a turning point in a narrative once the phone dies.
[00:25:04.275] Domenico Singha Pedroli: Yeah, I mean, let me... So, well, I mean, I already answered you about the use, but we can go back into the detail again of the phone again. But in this case, so I think the work, it's really clearly divided in two parts. So the first part is in, let's say, it takes place in Paris and then in Thailand. But of course, between the two, there is this kind of intermediate space, which is a sort of corridors and staircase. And... When we were kind of doing the level design, I really imagine that it becomes like a very labyrinthic, a moment that it kind of, you lose your sense of orientation. It's actually the part where you, if you turn when you're watching the art, that's where you turn the most. And for me, it was also this way that... And you feel the audience understand that she's going to Thailand because, for example, it becomes... She's smelling something, it's getting warm, like this is all communicated through her voice. And so she doesn't... In a way, at that point, I thought that, OK, maybe she doesn't need the phone anymore because she's really... going back but at the same time like the shift goes on and that is not only like she's kind of freed from this device but you know she's also freed from her body because as soon as we arrived in thailand she's uh we are a wandering spirits no so we are flying high and we are kind of navigating through this this place that again she cannot access but now in another kind of a state she can roam through
[00:26:54.973] Kent Bye: Yeah, I really like this threshold that you'd created to, you know, both transition from Paris into the corridors, and then we're kind of in this liminal space, and then at some point, as she's walking up the stairs, at the top of the stairs is a window, and she just goes out that window, and then all of a sudden we're transported into Thailand, and, you know, we kind of realize that at some point. It's unclear initially, because as I'm walking through, I'm like, okay, I'm... Maybe still in Paris, but then, you know, okay, now we're clearly in another location. But it served as a, I guess, that threshold space. Speaking from architecture, it's like I don't ever remember a space where at the top of the stairs is a window that's open and then you go out the window and then you're just kind of floating. And so it's clearly in this kind of like... We're in another logic, a dream logic of sorts. It feels like, okay, now I'm in a dream. But it was kind of a seamless transition into this dream logic realm. But it was like the key was, okay, well, there's a staircase that's leading outside of the window. Now we're flying. And so, yeah, just curious to hear this kind of like grammar shift that happens with the space that you designed to make this threshold transition from one state to the next.
[00:28:11.334] Domenico Singha Pedroli: Yeah, well, actually, this kind of moment of passing through the window and we pass through like we clip it in using like a video game jargon. So we because we really pass through, let's say, the assets and actually like the reference dates back through, I think. One of my favorite films, I don't know the date, it's probably like in the late 70s or beginning of the 80s. It's called The Passenger by this Italian filmmaker called Michelangelo Antonioni. And this film, it's a very mysterious film about almost metaphysical because there is a... the main character, which is played by Jack Nicholson, decides to ditch his own identity to escape. He's a journalist and he just escapes. And as the film unfolds, he's being followed by his family and the police and other people. Anyway, in this kind of... penultimate shot which the film is very known for it's this very long take in which I mean I'm sorry to spoil you the film but basically we transition from let's say the living character to the dead characters and this kind of a eight minutes long take we passed through the window and this moment of passing through the window with the camera which again technically wise was very complex because there are pictures of the shooting of the scene in which they really had to there was a mechanism that opened up the grid of the window in order to make the camera pass and to be attached on a crane to create this kind of floating effect. So again, for me, that shot kind of encapsulated this kind of early idea of a spiritual journey. starting from a very physical let's say gra let's say yeah from a very physical world to a very ethereal suspended world so that's why i think that in the process like in the in the in the narration of the work in the architecture that kind of uh that moment offered the the yeah the right spot to kind of convey all these ideas and reference yeah
[00:30:40.037] Kent Bye: Yeah, and once we start to enter into this more dream scape, we're floating, flying through the air, and there's these glowing red orbs on these cars. The scenes are very evocative, because I was like, okay, what's the context here? What's the situation? Or what's this mean? At this point, I don't know where I'm at, and I think it wasn't until the end where I got to her... Okay, now we're firmly in Thailand. And so there was a transition there. But at certain moments, I don't know when I realized when we were firmly there. I just felt like we're in this dream logic, liminal space that's in between one state to the next. But maybe just elaborate on some of the kind of more... evocative uh or beguiling type of imagery that you wanted to have that seemed to have maybe some symbolism or maybe it was just trying to evoke other feelings of emotions of mystery yeah i'm just trying to just curious if you can maybe elaborate on it yeah no so once we get to this thai streets which is kind of we try to recreate the streets in where she was living
[00:31:49.062] Domenico Singha Pedroli: I would also, kind of in a, let's say, less rigorous way, I try also to recreate, let's say, the fact that when she was forced to flee the country, like, some days before, like, police came to her apartment to confiscate all the, kind of, all the things that she used, like, smartphone, computers, that she used to write these social media posts. Like, this is kind of a standard procedure. And so this kind of red light, which is kind of, again, aesthetically very powerful, but also, again, politically very concrete, were kind of a... It was also like a way to kind of state that in any case... she goes back either as a ghost or as a real person like police will always be there waiting no but because she's flying she doesn't have to get into the trouble but she kind of hear the conversation the fact that she's still being searched and for me like having this kind of menacing presence was also i think it narratively wise it would kind of enhance this kind of uh yeah this complexity of a journey home because okay she's In a way, it's still inconceivable because it's impossible. So even in her imagination, she cannot allow herself too much. and so that's why also when we get into her bedroom which is a kind of the let's say the most tender moment and the the moment where in a way she gets emotional to kind of reconnect with this kind of uh her domestic animals we still have the light of the police cars, which was kind of foreshadowed before, that it's kind of still stating that, you know, there's something menacing, there's something unresolved and that, yeah, her condition is still in a way precarious and she's still fragilized. And I think, yeah, I hope, yeah.
[00:34:05.700] Kent Bye: Okay, so yeah, those are the police cars that would be waiting for her. So just to clarify a little bit of her journey and story out of Thailand into France, when we re-enter into her apartment, her home, she says, Oh, I made... It's amazing that I've... gotten into this trouble by posting this Facebook post critiquing the monarchy. So did she actually get arrested or did she leave before anything happened because she knew that if she stayed around then she would be going to prison?
[00:34:41.946] Domenico Singha Pedroli: Yeah, so from the moment she wrote the Facebook post, which was, I think, now I don't remember, I think in 2020 or 2021, like during COVID, there were many protests happening. and uh so like right after like a moment after like her post was taken down but uh was um and at the same time like some like human rights lawyer approached her and because they said okay let's see if we can do something because what you said is very it can really be dangerous and it's very unforgivable considering the context and after a moment they said look it's very difficult to kind of find a solution so The best way is that you don't show up to the court. And after that, at the same time, again, the police came to her apartment, confiscated all the objects, and she got this arrest warrant that lasted 30 years. And that's actually this document that she had to use to... No, sorry, it's 20 years still. But it's this document that she kind of had to always bring with her all the time because that's also how she managed to kind of have a... Yeah, to request, to ask for a political refugee status because that's really like, it's really written on an A4 paper and it's, you know, you see the date, I think like you are arrested until like 2045 and no, like, yeah, you cannot argument that. So, yeah.
[00:36:34.266] Kent Bye: Okay, so those cars were the police cars that were waiting for her if she were there, but because she's a ghost, she's able to actually go back and kind of revisit her pets. There's like three or four, maybe even more cats that are there, lots of cats, but they're all like... Interacting with her and they're purring and then she's having this kind of cozy moment with them where she's able to return home and so yeah, I'm just curious if she's had a chance to see the piece and you know what if it brought up anything for her as this kind of Imaginal reconnection to her her homeland in her home.
[00:37:09.624] Domenico Singha Pedroli: Yeah, that's actually when the her as a person become very You know, always surprising because I'm not sure if she always avoided to see the final, final version, but I think she already saw a build with most of the elements in place, including her voice and her bedroom. And surprisingly enough, I guess for every person, like when she watched it, and we watched it together, like she was in my living room and she watched it, like she just reacted to say, oh, it's so weird to hear my voice. You know, it was a very kind of almost death pen in her reaction, no? I mean, let's say that her reaction was a bit, let's say, not emotional. It didn't have a dramatic peak, let's say. But what I can say, and this is kind of the part of the project that I take most of the pride, is that... through the process we also I also help her with the bureaucracy for for all the paperwork concerning like the political refugee status and preparing her for the interview because you know this interview with the refugee let's say institutions are kind of tough they can put you in like you know in a harsh place and this discourse wise and so i really saw like and this really happened after the project let's say wrapped let's say that she basically slowly kind of uh get back like she kind of slowly received the rights that she was kind of looking for so she got the refugee status and a few months later she got a job and she could open a bank account and she and like until like to one year late fast forward to one year later she got the residency permit for 10 years and you know she's now finding an apartment so basically like If the film ends in a very suspended way, because it really encapsulated that moment in her life in which she was very floating, basically, between bureaucracy, between emotion, between where to put your roots. But one year later, after the project finished, she basically, okay, she was becoming like a... i mean i don't want but you know a citizen no we are a citizen with all the rights of a citizen and i think that's also i mean because i'm happy that i'm here at itfa because it's a documentary film festival and i think documentary are dealing with reality with the real and their project that they kind of actively influence reality yeah
[00:40:11.457] Kent Bye: Nice. And where did this project first premiere?
[00:40:14.259] Domenico Singha Pedroli: It was, well, last spring at New Images. So I was very happy to, in a way, have a premiere there because, again, I was not living in Paris back then. I was in Rome, so it was also a way to get back to Paris, but also show, again, having this kind of meta... aspect of the fact that you are watching the experience in Paris and then you kind of roam, go back to Thailand. I think that element for me was very interesting to play with and it was also a chance to show it to more people within my network. And also, like, then I had a very calm summer, but kind of picked up, let's say, kind of late bloom in autumn, because it went to Art VR Festival in Prague at the beginning of October, Doc Leipzig, and now... It's at Versio Human Rights Festival in Budapest and also in Brazil in a queer film festival and now ITFA and in a couple of weeks it will be at Bogo Shorts in Bogota. So again, it's kind of a finding also like an international audience, which, you know, to be a student project, this is great.
[00:41:39.268] Kent Bye: Great. So what's next for you? What do you have coming up?
[00:41:42.853] Domenico Singha Pedroli: Well, I mean, this was this is a sort of question like related to VR, of course, that was kind of important for me in this kind of festival circuits, because I knew that, OK, on one hand it will be presenting the project, but also I would probably like encounter many people who will ask me, OK, this is your first VR project. Will you do it? Will you do it again? Unfortunately, I don't have a fully binary answer. Yes, I will do it. No, I will not do it. Let's say that I was very happy with the experience. I'm still very attached to cinema and now I'm working on two films, one short film and one feature film, which again, the workload is already quite demanding. But at the same time I feel like maybe we didn't talk about the technique of the film but I really had to learn to use the software. Unity and part of the level design I also did it and particularly like the pacing. The pacing is a very important element of the work and for me because i always edit my own film i had to be able to transpose the same let's say working experience also in a vr work so let's say that with this kind of internship i really learned a lot about it and I'm very curious about the possibility of not necessarily like a single player VR, but really be more creative with the medium itself. So maybe something more collective or something more kind of spread out because, you know, there are other work that use VR chat or multiplayer. And I don't know. I feel like. there's room to kind of bring back the collective experience that cinema can offer, for example.
[00:43:45.634] Kent Bye: Yeah, for sure. And there have been different places that have been showing these kind of virtual immersive expeditions with Excurio's technology that allows a group of people to kind of go through an experience together and walk through the space and Kind of like you would take a guided tour. Um, similarly, you're kind of taking a guided tour and they're able to get enough people in where it's a technique that works. Um, that is, that has proven to be profitable enough to kind of create more of a, a shared group experience where everybody's able, where you're able to see, uh, where people are able to, to have a lot more, uh, To be able to have a room scale experience together in a way that they're able to see everything. Yeah, so I think that there's new emerging forms that are coming out there. But not all pieces are geared to be able to do that since, you know, there's... Those pieces tend to try to do physical locomotion, but, you know, doing virtual locomotion in those different types of settings doesn't always work as well. And I think in a piece like yours, I mean, you could have people walking through, but I think it works for me a little bit better just to kind of have a cinematic experience of it where because there's quite a lot of spaces that I'm traveling through. And then at some point we're not there's there's a lack of a correlation between actually moving through a space and. So yeah, I think there's different things like what I see with what Cosm in the Sphere are doing, where it's more of a dome experience. So there's things that do have that. But yeah, I think it's still kind of emerging to see what distribution mechanisms are going to work for that, but also what content of the experiences are going to really fit that format. So yeah, I don't know if you have any other reflections or thoughts.
[00:45:29.580] Domenico Singha Pedroli: Yeah, no, maybe I can talk about one of, let's say, what could another kind of very powerful experience that I had with VR could eventually be a theoretical, let's say, level up of what I'm doing is Traversing the Mist. So by a Taiwanese collective, I don't remember.
[00:45:50.609] Kent Bye: Yin, his name's Yin, I forget his last name, but yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:45:55.891] Domenico Singha Pedroli: But I think it was, again, it's a very special work because you're basically embodying these people that roam in a gay sauna. And again, basically, you walk around and it's kind of a... the level design and how things unfold it's kind of built up in a smart way because you know in a I think five by five meters layout you're basically kind of keep moving and kind of keep let's say also changing floor and extending the so that's that's a very interesting possibility but at the same time you know I think you need a different infrastructure different budgets and And, yeah, like, and all this kind of adds up to the point that, okay, how does it integrate to my life that, you know, has already this kind of long project developing, you know, as a, you know, film, feature film, documentary. And so, but I'm not sure if I answered your question.
[00:47:03.033] Kent Bye: Oh, no, it was just more, no, that's fine. Just a quick follow on. Have you had a chance to see Traversing the Mist?
[00:47:11.840] Domenico Singha Pedroli: Yeah, I mean, I watched it in Cannes in 2024 because it was the first year that they organized, let's say, a proper VR section and it was one of the shown work. And no, no, no, I completely enjoyed it because... i don't know for me was uh again it was one of the few ways of one of the first experience that i kind of went through and it was very interesting to see just the switch like how mentally let's say as a viewer you switch from let's say stationary 360 vr which you know you're in a seat and you turn yourself around and you see this video that it's kind of unrelated to your body in a way like in just one axis of how your body moves but suddenly here you're you're a first person perspective you're walking and you know everything is very again for a lack of a better word it's immersive but in the most kind of um full scale sense because you know you are moving your and for me this is still very amazing of a VR headset like of a real time let's say PC VR setting is that how like this kind of gyroscope, like how sensible it is, this headset to your movement, that it kind of... Sometimes there is no lag, like you kind of step down and it really, in terms of eyesight, height and so on, it's like it works very... It tricks your brain very well. And I think traversing the mist, again, like use this kind of technology to... Very simply, like, show you a sauna and all the history behind, and also, again, like a personal story of the characters and so on. Plus, it's collective, so it also creates this kind of, yeah, sort of tension between other bodies that you can, I'm sure you can have in a sauna, but again, they are kind of reproducing it in a, as experience, not only visual experience. Mm-hmm.
[00:49:28.447] Kent Bye: Yeah, I had a chance to see each one of those three pieces of the trilogy and talked again about them. So, yeah, they're really great together as they are kind of pushing the edge of the technology for where it was at each moment that he made them. So, great. I guess as we start to wrap up, I'd love to hear what you think the ultimate potential of immersive art, immersive storytelling might be and what it might be able to enable.
[00:49:51.721] Domenico Singha Pedroli: Oh, wow, that's a tough one. I wonder how the other replies, but let's say I don't have a, let's say, evangelist reply, like a... Let's say, okay, it will solve people's problems. It will... But I think what I can say from my, let's say, perspective, from my process, like, I always... I really approach the medium as a medium of empathy, a way to see, to embody the other's point of view. And, again, because we are so submerged by constant content, which I guess... judging by the how the world is unfolding i don't think it kind of builds up our sense of empathy or a sense of comprehension or just sense of openness so let's say rather than how it will go because again we we all know that let's say vr technology vr headset is owned by big technological groups like Not only Meta, but also ByteDance and HTC, which is probably owned by another parent company. But anyway, they're controlling the two. Well, also Apple, but... So what I wish to see is that there are more and more projects, storytelling and more specific content that really, in a way, a bit like documentary, you know, like kind of expand this kind of notion of understanding the others, creating this kind of sympathetic and bridge towards other perspective. But in a more, in a much more visceral way.
[00:51:36.195] Kent Bye: Great. And is there anything else left unsaid that you'd like to share with the immersive community? Any final thoughts?
[00:51:44.382] Domenico Singha Pedroli: No, Will. I mean, I have to thank Kent, you, Kent, and also Voices of VR because, again, for a young, let's say, filmmaker or, let's say, VR artist, it's actually, and again, this is also another, let's say, unsolved problem of VR, so this is distribution. it's very difficult to access to VR works like you either I mean in 2022-2023 when I started to conceive the work you I could either go to okay Venice or to New Images or to other festivals to have a couple of two three festivals maybe in the US and then to have just a showcase of what was produced in a year no which again with cinema of course you can You have platforms such as Mubi, but you can also download. And maybe once you're starting to be in a filmmakers community, they can send you the link. So whatever your field of interest in film or research topic, you know, there are probably like some kind of hidden gems of the 80s, of the past that was done and it's sent it to you. But VR was very, I was completely blind, which was great also because it was very liberating. It's like, OK, you can do whatever you want. And so Voices of VR, through its kind of, let's say, purely like being a podcast, so hearing only the voice and, let's say, not seeing or not living through the experience itself, also allow me to, again, understanding all these kind of tools by the... by the maker's perspective and also let's say probably what kind of emotion it triggered so so yeah keep listening and keep watching the let's say how it evolves because I guess it's evolving every year and yeah I'm curious I'm very very curious to see how it evolves especially you know I think there are at least one or two very interesting articles per month coming out from the international press It really kind of shows that the application using VR for maybe therapeutic areas, for hospitals, also it has been used in prisons. So I think if we consider it not only as, let's say, as entertainment, but as a tool, overarching tool, I'm sure there will be many, many interesting applications. Also very dystopic, but I guess that's happened with everything. Everything technological has this kind of always ambivalence. But let's hope that more and more people do it for the good.
[00:54:35.756] Kent Bye: Thank you for that. I just had a few quick thoughts on that. Avinash Chenga is going to be giving a presentation on his efforts to try to archive some of these different pieces because I think that with digital art, things can disappear so ephemeral. With the lack of distribution on top of the lack of easy to preserve, then it ends up being like these ephemeral theatrical performances of sorts where either you were there to see it or you don't get to see it. So, yeah, for me, it's always been the most compelling of projects and works to see. And then my process has been to try to see as much as I can and then to understand. kind of store it in my own body and my own memories, and then through the conversations with the artists, have them describe their four braids of who they are, their story, the story of what they're trying to tell, the process by which they're telling it, but also share some of my own impressions and ways that I'm making sense of what they're doing. And so, yeah, it's a process that... For me, it ends up being a very lightweight way to see everything and then talk to people. So, yeah. So it's been a real pleasure to be able to travel around the world and see all the things and talk to all the people, as it were. Yeah. And I really appreciate, you know, the type of kind of, you know. It's like a walking tour or you're going through this kind of wandering. It's guided, it's on rails, but yeah, there's something compelling around this walking through the space and hearing the story in this way of getting to learn about the main character of a piece through these kind of... memories and audio reflections and but also this journey back into their home that's in this kind of dream logic um that kind of seamlessly transitions into it so yeah i thought it like worked really well and uh yeah i just really appreciated uh all the ways that you're kind of bringing in all these different references and your deep insight into the medium so yeah thanks again for joining me here on the podcast uh dominico to help break it all down
[00:56:31.360] Domenico Singha Pedroli: Thank you very much to you, Kent, for this very interesting and joyful interview. And thank you very much for the audience and the future audience.
[00:56:40.849] Kent Bye: That's all that we have for today. And I just wanted to thank you for listening to the Wiss' VR podcast. If you enjoyed the podcast, then please do spread the word, tell your friends, and consider becoming a member of the Patreon. This is a listen-supported podcast, so I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue to bring you this coverage. You can become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash voices of VR. Thanks for listening.
