#06

Last year in March, I lost a very good friend of mine called Oskar.

He was a great influence on me in my teens and early 20s, sharing with me his passions for VR, Sci-fi and RTS games. The kind of things which I’ve come to be hugely passionate about also, and even define who I am.

I hadn’t spoken to him in a while due to general life things for me and mental struggles for him, nonetheless his passing was a great loss for me and everyone who knew him.

After I spoke about his affect on me during his funeral, his parents wanted to thank me and we came to the agreement that a small camera would be an appropriate gift. 

I had already a small digital camera that enabled a focus on the moment, mimicked the aesthetic and experience of old analogue film cameras but had the ability to capture hundreds of photos, but without the distraction of dslr features or phone apps. 


I asked for a camera of the same kind but of a different colour (white).

The camera has the ability to have a ‘black and white’ filter loaded onto it, so I did that and named the camera The Oskar with the intention to use it to take pictures of quiet, contemplative or particular moments in my everyday experience. Moments that not necessarily reminded me of Os, but helped me remember that essence of curiosity and creativity that he instilled in me.





So every now and then, I will share a few pictures taken with that camera here, pictures and moments inspired by Oskar.

#06

I attended a technical demonstration yesterday called “ ONE WORD 5G? You're having a Bath.” which showed how “5G SA small cells can provide high capacity without being and environmental eyesore”.

Their main demonstration was hosting an AI driven AR Centurion companion in the Roman Baths, in Bath. 

The demonstration was very impressive, so much so that it was almost benal.

The technology was so fast and seemless, I didn’t even notice it, it was a background process that I didn’t even think about, much like the millions of technical processes that go off without a hitch in our daily lives.

The Centurion AI Augmented Reality experience was developed by Richard and Adam from Rocketmakers and was itself very cool, albeit a bit talkative!

While I had the opportunty, I decided to try and capture the Romans Baths in Gaussian Splat format, which I trained today via the Jawset Postshot desktop app.

I am regularly amazed at the quality of Gaussian Splats these days, this one was made with only 170ish images, at night, moving people and water reflections!

I intended to share the resulting splat online but unfortunately it was too big!

#05

Two weeks ago I went to the Immersive Experience Network ‘Live Experience Summit ’24  on Oct 21st.

I attended in my own capacity, curious to expand my perspective in the following areas that span my current work streams:


    a) Discover a better sense of the broader immersive industry and community beyond xR.

    b) Explore industry perspectives on on/offboarding, to contribute towards my own research into Immersion Thresholds.

    c) Gauge potential for this community to advise and influence the production of Immersive Training for emergency services.


Expecting to be on my own it was lovely to run into a few familiar faces: Carl, Caroline, Ruth, Emma, Rob & Jane - great to see you all there and catch up albeit briefly!

What follows is a summary of my notes and general thoughts on the huge amount of advice, information and passion which I experienced at the Summit - Thank you IEN and all their partners for putting it on!

Welcome to the IEN Summit 2024

10:00 - 10:20    1. Fireworks Factory

I didn’t take that many notes at the welcome, I guess I was too excited, all I put was “Young organisation” and I remember them saying last year they had 300 people and this year they had 700, which is pretty awesome.

The Key of Dreams : Lessons learned from running a 24 hour immersive mystery game

10:30 - 11:30     3. Beanfeast


It was refreshing to hear Emily Carding & Ivan Carić of Lemon Difficult talk so candidly and passionately about their work.

Their advice and reflections around onboarding talked about helping audiences ‘grasp the grammar of the world’, allowing for ‘Read’ time and ‘starting with the mundane’ to establish a place of safety for their audiences.


If the goal of complete immersion was the top of a pyramid, I see that the establishment of safety is the foundation of that pyramid. I had a sense of this before the summit and it was so encouraging to see leaders in the industry confirming this as best practice.


Hearing Emily and Ivan reflect on small intense moments of their show, which they also perform in, made me so so keen to go to one of their shows myself. I am now saving up for it!

Agency & Alibi : Participant secrets from the LARP toolkit

11:40 - 12:10    2. Ropekeepers 


Simon Brind from Avalon LARP Studio gave a presentation that really engaged my Immersive Training brain.


LARPs are not immersive shows but are co-created experiences made from layered realities.


The organisers of LARPs largely stay out of the experience. They just establish the world, the rules and the coherences. The core experience is a result of “Intra-Immersion”, a kind of hive-mind immersion. This led me to draw a connection to Emergency service training, particularly large cross service simulations, which are essentially just LARPs.


The Alibi of the talk was that LARPs enable participants to do things they wouldn’t normally do, because they are inhabiting a character, and engage in activity with the underlying knowledge that they can step away at any time.  That got me thinking about adopting this idea for Immersive Training.


Would enabling emergency service trainees to inhabit or act a part other than themselves during a simulation help them focus on the situation or scenario in a way that mitigates the initial stress and performance anxiety?


Can other safety tools (such as escalation and de-escalation techniques) from the LARPing community help encourage safer and more in depth learning for emergency service simulation training?

Horror & Trojan Horses : Hidden lessons learned from creating a theatrical scare experience

12:10 - 12:40    2. Ropekeepers 


Hearing Michael Badelt from INTYA Creative speak of the iterative process behind making his horror experience over many years was incredible.


At first, I thought this talk might not be as relevant to my interests, but I soon found that there are many mechanical and themetical similarities between creating an entertaining experience around Fear and a training experience around Risk.

Micheal talked about the associated risks of creating a horror experience that could potentially end up being a ‘serial exposure therapy experience’. I thought, isn’t this what simulation paramedic training is? Exposing trainees to risky or unlikely emergency situations so they can prepare themselves for the real thing?


Having not been particularly jazzed about horror experiences in the past, it was during Michaels presentation that I learned a lot about the mechanics of fear, the brain on fear and the chronological mapping of fear during an experience. All of which has given me an increased appreciation of horror experiences and perhaps want to experience more of them in the future.

Lunch - Sausage sandwich and Carrot cake

12:40 - 13:40    Woolwich Works Cafe


I had a lovely discussion with a man called Dave during lunch about my questions around whether trainees should perform scenarios as themselves or inhabit a character. We couldn’t decide whether enabling people to be a character, adding a separating layer between themselves and the scenario, as opposed to just acting as themselves would benefit or hinder the learning experience. Research needed!

Meet the Experts : Why immersive experiences crash and how to fix them

13:40 - 14:10    5. Coopers 


Theo Holloway from Deterministic Ltd led a very helpful conversation in which I gained the following insights:

Immersive experiences are inherently collaborative but the systems that create and maintain them are often so complicated and so interlinked that they need visible and responsive leadership to be successful.

When things get big, it’s not just bigger versions of the small things, you need to plan for scaling from the start.


Theo had a lot of tips on avoiding tech failure, which I didn’t necessarily need  at this point in time but I know will be invaluable in the future.

[2nd half of] In Conversation with Punchdrunk: Navigating the evolving landscape of immersive theatre

14:10 - 14:30    1.Fireworks Factory


I attended the second half of the conversation with Punchdrunk which actually reflected some of Deterministic’s insight in that they encouraged us to think through everything and to understand our experiences at scale before being at scale.


For newbies their advice included not to rush and to give time to creation, think through everything, collaborate and ask for help and finally when pitching back it up with figures.


All fantastic advice! - Wish I attended it all!

Break

14:30 - 14:50

From concept to reality: Building a high tech, narratively rich open world game

14:50 - 15:50     3.Beanfeast


Jeroen van Hasselt of Entered led a wonderfully detailed presentation about his immersive experience ‘Demise of the Gricers’.

His first piece of advice that he learned early on in his career and passed onto us was ‘Drop the ego’ which I agree is an important lesson for anyone in this very (almost exclusively) collaborative industry.


Echoing Lemon Difficult, Jeroen spoke of using ‘tutorial’ time at the start as an onboarding mechanic as well as employing 3 design ‘pillars’, in his case “horror”, “trains” and “World” - building mechanics around them, what I like to call ‘coherence’, that make sense of the world with those pillars from there.


He spoke of striving to instil a feeling for his audience that “There is always more to explore”.

Similarly to Emily and Ivan, Jorem spoke of establishing safety to begin with, saying that “The more safe someone feels the more open they are to fear.”


For training, this is the same I believe: the more safe and supported a learner feels, the more open they are to whatever the learning requires them to feel whether that be fear, stress, humility, or reflection.




An autumnal tree seen through a gate taken here.

Break

15:50 - 16:20 


I was getting fairly overwhelmed at this point and this was my only gripe about the summit - there wasn’t an indoor quiet space, an area to sit or lie down and recharge my social and intellectual batteries. I even wrote in my notebook for this time slot “nap time?” - I ended up standing in a disabled toilet to recharge but that felt weird after 10 mins so I moved to the main room and laid on the bleachers and closed my eyes for a bit but that only helped a little. I could have walked the short 3min distance to my hotel room I suppose but I then would have only had about 10 mins there anyway.

Unlocking the secret to experiences that leave a lasting impression

16:20 - 17:20     3.Beanfeast


A very memorable talk from Gijs (Pronounced “Hyce”) Geers from DarkPark where I took away a great many notes, a select few being that ‘each experience is personal’ and that ‘we create circumstances, not experiences’.


Gijs encouraged my belief in the improvisational technique of “Yes and” as a helpful tool for letting audiences have their experience.

He was adamant to allow the audience just to have their experience, stating his secret was to ‘create something beautiful’ and then just  “Shut up and Smile”.


One of the best pieces of advice I took away from his talk was ‘to notice moments where I feel something, to analyse those moments and then master the tools to recreate those feelings’.  When asked during the Q&A one of my favourite things to think about - how does he define his audience, are they Players? [Immersants? Engagents etc?] Gijs simply suggested that we should just define our audiences as people and not necessarily label them anything else.

Trends, Traps and Opportunities in the Immersive experience entertainment sector

17:30 - 18:30    2.Ropekeepers


The final talk I attended was extremely insightful. Adrian Hon kindly shared his latest industry research where he conducted interviews with a variety of production companies in the immersive entertainment sector.


Something of the key things I took away from his presentation was that when it came to onboarding, everyone is still experimenting with this and there is no consistent standard of practice. Generally there appears to be a growing interest in Roleplay and experiences which offer early access is a good way to make money.


Some of the traps that he warned against was as the industry grows and matures, there is increased scrutiny and expectations for immersive experiences and perhaps makers need to have better disclosure about the content of their work. He later commented during the Q&A that most of the experiences that are marketed as ‘immersive’ actually could be better described as having strong ‘theming’ rather then ‘being immersive’. Adrian commented that the overuse of the term ‘immersive’ is diluting it’s meaning, so much so that many in the industry perhaps dislike using the term.


Something he recommended since experiences are often so transient - Document things better!


He said that there was still a lack of cross industry awareness which I would agree with since I asked this, Immersive Training could greatly benefit from the immersive entertainment industry.

Notes Summary

I am very glad I attended this summit, almost on a whim and mostly driven by curiosity. I achieved what I set out to discover, explore and gauge, finding a broad spectrum of experiences and companies actively pushing the boundaries of the industry. It was interesting to know that many people were still exploring the on/off boarding of their audiences and no standard of practice exists yet though there are shared foundations in care and safety which was very encouraging. Throughout the day, when I talked about my curiosity about how this industry can inform the Immersive Training variety of learning for Emergency Services, I was met with nothing but enthusiasm and encouragement. Everyone I spoke to, listened to and encountered was open and lovely. If I get the opportunity to attend next year, see you there!




Thank you for reading and please reach out if you’d like to discuss any of these things further!

H

All photos taken by me during my travels home the following day, this photo was taken in Tottenham Court Road Underground Station:

#04

As a resident at Pervasive Media Studio Resident I am encouraged to talk about the work I do via a ‘Luchtime Talk’.

On July 26th I decided to present a summary of all the work I did as a Fellow in Residence at Zero Point Motion.

And you can watch it all here

#03

New Pervasive Media Studio Resident

Having been a temporary residient for the last few projects based out of the Pervasive Media Studio, I am now officially a permanent resident! You can find my profile here:

https://www.watershed.co.uk/studio/residents/harry-willmott