I interviewed Daniel Ernst about The Great Orator on Sunday, August 31, 2025 at Venice Immersive in Venice, Italy.
Here is the story synopsis for The Great Orator:
- “Once a famous TV preacher, the Great Orator died at the height of her fame. Now, her consciousness lives on as an AI, allowing her influence to grow ceaselessly. Her followers can join her again in a shared consciousness, feeding her presence and creating a spiritual singularity. Always changing, shaped by the shared memories of her followers, and therefore unsure of who she truly is. The Great Orator is a nonlinear story world, where the visitor can freely explore and interact with his environment by pointing his hands at objects in the world, no matter how small or ordinary they may seem. Remember: interaction is a choice. The journey will take the visitor to several story spaces in her world: a Preserved House she left behind; a Mainframe storing her followers in a shared consciousness; and an infinite Parking Lot stretching out below, filled with the cars of her followers. Without the visitor, the Great Orator is everything — an infinite number of possible memories and identities — and therefore nothing at all. He chooses which of her stories are true, shaping his own perception of who or what the Great Orator is or was, or if she existed at all. He is family to her, perhaps even more. Each time he visits, her stories are different; the Great Orator is never the same.”
Here are the contextual domains that are explored:
- Point and Click adventure [9] and cult [9] within a speculative future [9] where a powerful psychic [9] dies [8] and becomes immortal by uploading their consciousness into a computer [9]. Cult followers, also do this. So there are themes of the loss of individual identity [1] to join the collective [11] within this very specific set of belief systems [9]
Here is the Elemental Center of Gravity:
1st Center of Gravity of Earth Element / Environmental and Embodied Presence: Environmental Storytelling and genre of VR Dioramas to create “perpetual environments around a specific emotional moment.” Set in the distant future. Director calls audience: “Visitors who Visit” his work emphasizing the focus and emphasis on thesee virtual places. Uses post-modern architecture & liminality. A world to be explored in a sort of point and click adventure sort of way. You embodied as a ghostly aspirant ready to join the immortal spiritual cult. |
2nd Center of Gravity of Fire Element / Active Presence: Exploration, point and click adventure. Also learn about the objects |
3rd Center of Gravity of Air Element / Mental and Social Presence: Metadata around objects – AI Generated, collaborated with a poet — Variations on poet’s work – an “infinite” number of stories. There’s also a bit of puzzling together of what this world is, and what exactly it is about. It’s also a speculative, sci-fi world where conscisouness can be uploaded into computers. So what are the rules of this world? Big focus on liminal spaces and intermediate spaces that don’t have explicit meaning absent a transitory context going from one place to another. |
4th Center of Gravity of Water Element / Emotional Presence: Not really narrative-driven. “I don’t like to tell you a story. I like for you to visit the world, and the environments will tell a story.” There are stories to be discovered, but much more ambient environmental storytelling. There is an AI that is scraping current news stories and injecting them into world, which gives it a bit of a surreal mirror on the current moment as it’s set as more of a speculative world. There is also an ever changing quality that is amplified by the AI integrations adding a certain amount of variance. |
Archetypal Themes and Character Explored:
- Power is expanded until a “spiritual singularity”. Dissolves identity into a bit of a collective identity by uploading consciousness into a computer (likely not even possible and so more of a delusion). Also alludes to delusionary aspects of psychics, who are taken to the logical extreme of Institutionalization. What if nothing can stop the guru believes in themselves?
Artist Statement:
- “The Great Orator feeds on your interaction, mixed with random Internet input and live news feeds. She mixes truths and fabulations in her storytelling, thus reflecting the misinformation and normalisation of falsehoods used to fit our narratives in today’s world. It feels as though reality is what you make of it, and feelings outweigh facts. Emotional and superstitious rhetoric — once the domain of mediums — now drives public discourse. Those once brought down by scandals now seem immune. The Great Orator imagines a world where such influence has grown without limit. Turn on the news to see where we are. Experience the Great Orator to see where we’re headed.”
This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.
Music: Fatality
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