Project | Virtual Realities: Immersive Documentary Encounters
- Jul 2017–Jun 2020
- Documentary • Nonfiction • Virtual Reality
Exploring the production, audience and experience of nonfiction virtual reality media content.
Partners: Jongsma and O'Neill, Aardman Animations Ltd, BBC, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The Guardian, University of Bath, University of Bristol, University of the West of England, VR City, VRTOV & Watershed.
- Project Website
- http://vrdocumentaryencounters.co.uk
- Funding Body
- EPSRC
- Grant Reference
- EP/P025595/1
Gallery
Chris at the Venice Film Festival's 'VR Island', August 2019
Our commissioned piece 'The Waiting Room' saw a showing at the 2019 Venice Film Festival. Of course, we had to go and show our support. Here's Chris enjoying some of the festival's many VR offerings. Full programme: https://www.labiennale.org/en/cinema/2019/venice-virtual-reality.
L-R: David Green, Danae Stanton Fraser, Ki Cater and Chris Bevan. Venice Film Festival, 2019.
VR Nonfiction: A Mediography
VR Nonfiction - A Mediography is a database of virtual reality nonfiction content covering the period 2012–2018. Beginning with Nonny de la Peña's initial explorations of immersive journalism in 2012, the VR Mediography project is the first attempt to comprehensively map the emergence and development of VR as a new medium for experiencing nonfiction content. http://vrdocumentaryencounters.co.uk/vrmediography/
Jo Gildersleve and Ki Cater, Venice Film Festival, 2019
Exploring the themes of nonfiction VR: 2012-2018
Nonny De la Pena and VRTOV @ VR Docs Commissions Showcase
Victoria Mapplebeck and Shehani Fernando discuss 'The Waiting Room VR'
Looking behind the curtain of the 'Ultimate Empathy Machine': Dr Harry Farmer
Nonny De La Pena presents 'Reach' @ VR Docs project showcase
The Waiting Room: VR
"The Waiting Room: VR" (Dir. Victoria Mapplebeck) was one of three new pieces of VR nonfiction that were commissioned by the VR Docs Project. The Waiting Room went on to be premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2019, and later won the Doclab digital storytelling award at IDFA. Read more: https://eastcityfilms.com/the-waiting-room-vr
Love and Seawater
Love and Seawater (Lisa Harewood & Ewan Cass-Cavanagh) addresses the legacy of the separations between parents and children that have been a feature of Caribbean economic migration.
Transplant
Transplant is a new work by producers Oscar Raby and Katy Morrison of the VRTOV studio, whose field-defining VR projects have been shown and celebrated from Sundance to Sheffield DocFest. Transplant is set in Chile under the dictatorship of General Pinochet. Centring on the ideas of biologist and philosopher Francisco Varela, as he undergoes a liver transplant, it asks; how do we repair a damaged organism? how do we reorganise a damaged society? Transplant asks us to consider, through interactive VR, the relationship between body and mind.
Chris at IDFA 2019
Chris experiencing the latest in nonfiction VR at the 2019 International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam.
At FUTURES - European Researchers' Night, 2019
Kirsten Cater at IDFA 2019
Screenshot: Love and Seawater
Screenshot: Transplant
Virtual Realities: Immersive Documentary Encounters: Project Website
Publications
- Did you see what I saw?: Comparing attentional synchrony during 360 degree video viewing in head mounted display and tablets
- Harry Farmer, Chris Bevan, David Green, Mandy Rose, Kirsten Cater and Danaë Stanton Fraser. 2020. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied. APA. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/xap0000332.
- 'You wouldn't get that from watching TV!': Exploring audience responses to virtual reality non-fiction in the home
- David Green, Mandy Rose, Chris Bevan, Harry Farmer, Kirsten Cater, Danaë Stanton Fraser. 2020. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. Sage. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856520979966.
- Behind The Curtain Of The "Ultimate Empathy Machine": On The Composition Of Virtual Reality Nonfiction Experiences
- Chris Bevan, David Phillip Green, Harry Farmer, Mandy Rose, Kirsten Cater, Danaë Stanton Fraser and Helen Brown. 2019. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Proceedings (CHI 2019), May 4–9, 2019, Glasgow, Scotland UK. ACM, New York, NY, USA. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300736.
- Did You See What I Saw?: Comparing User Synchrony When Watching 360 Video In HMD Vs Flat Screen
- Harry Farmer, Chris Bevan, David Philip Green, Mandy Rose, Kirsten Cater and Danaë Stanton Fraser. 2019. 2019 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR). IEEE. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/VR.2019.8797968.
- Using Design Fiction to Explore the Ethics of VR 'In the Wild'
- David Philip Green, Guy Peter Schofield, James Hodge, Mandy Rose, Kirsten Cater, Chris Bevan and Stuart Iain Gray. 2019. Proceedings of the 2019 ACM International Conference on Interactive Experiences for TV and Online Video (TVX19). ACM. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3317697.3323346.
- What can the first years of VR nonfiction tell us about its future? Looking back on Virtual Reality nonfiction: 2012-2018
- Chris Bevan. 2019. Immerse.
- A Mediography Of Virtual Reality Non-Fiction: Insights And Future Directions
- Chris Bevan and David Green. 2018. In Proceedings of the 2018 ACM International Conference on Interactive Experiences for TV and Online Video (TVX '18). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 161-166. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3210825.3213557.
Press
- Immersive VR Documentary showcases at the Venice Film Festival
- University of Bath. Sept. 12, 2019.
- Experience immersive VR documentaries
- University of Bristol. June 18, 2019.
Awards
- Honorary Mention Award
- Behind the Curtain of the “Ultimate Empathy Machine": on the Composition of Virtual Reality Nonfiction Experiences. ACM CHI International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2019).