TORONTO – Virtual reality (VR) is taking centre stage at a new experimental creative documentary lab from the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), the Canadian Film Centre’s Media Lab (CFC Media Lab) and JustFilms | Ford Foundation.
Set to begin October 11, Open Immersion: A Virtual Reality Creative Doc Lab will bring together six Indigenous Canadian artists plus six artists from the American South in CFC and NFB spaces in Toronto to explore the possibilities of VR as a new storytelling platform. The lab has been designed to immerse the participants in both the theory and practice of creating engaging, interactive media and to push the creative storytelling process through a rigorous hands-on creative development process comprised of keynote presentations, case study critiques, group sessions and peer collaboration.
“The pairing of Canada’s top Indigenous talent with notable American artists from culturally diverse backgrounds will ignite a timely new discussion on point of view and representation in a new storytelling medium,” said Anita Lee, NFB’s executive producer English program (Ontario Centre), in the news release. “The notions of ‘reality’ and ‘truth’ have never been more nuanced with the expansion of new technologies, and therefore capturing and representing ‘reality’ never more interesting, especially in the hands of artists whose voices are not often heard in the commercial industry.”
“The CFC Media Lab has a long history of designing and facilitating programs that offer a rigorous critique of the medium through knowledge immersion and prototyping,” added CFC chief digital officer Ana Serrano. “VR exists on a continuum of immersive and interactive media practices and storytelling. The participants of Open Immersion each come from diverse backgrounds and disciplines; they not only understand that continuum, but also bring their own ways of seeing and doing storytelling into VR. The results will enhance the ongoing and now-more inclusive conversation about what it means to tell an immersive and interactive story.”
