Wonderfull: The Poetic Fortune Teller

Areas of focus:

• FullDome technology
• Observing audience participation in immersive experiences. Who and how?
• Perception and magic moments – how real life interacts with controlled but seemingly
  spontaneous variables.
• The voice and identity of my machine
• How immersive technology reflects and illuminates the magic and wonder of the real world.

Stages:

There are three stages to this funded activity; planning, research and evaluation of immersive tech in relation to my creative practise.

• Organising meetings with established artists working in immersive arts for insights on developing concepts and building immersive work for audiences.
• Attending OFFF festival and Sous Dome festival to observe audiences, learn from
  creatives and be inspired by international projects.
• Building a plan for experimenting with specific technologies which feel right for this idea.
• Developing my confidence and public profile as a poet working with creative technologies
• Documenting and sharing insights and milestones from this process to build an
  audience for this work.

Following this period of activity, I will have acquired the tools; insight, knowledge and connections necessary to apply for Experiment funding to assemble a skilled team poised to build this idea using immersive technology.

SOUSDOME, PARIS

I spent two days watching full-dome films from all over the world, & one live music performance.

I observed audience engagement; Audible reactions, demographics, when people left.

Spoke with members of the audience in attendance; Which films resonated with them & what brought them there to the festival

Reflected on my own opinions and ideas towards the technology.

During one series of films, one of the films lagged and fell out of sync. I wondered what had happened and why it couldn’t be stopped and started.

I held back in the auditorium to listen in to what the artist was saying and how the tech team were responding. They were unable to play individual films once they had been loaded up; this meant that a simple stop start wouldn’t work.

Whilst overhearing this, I approached two people and asked them my audience questions. We got into a conversation about narrative in fulldome and I introduced myself as a poet who is exploring how this technology could make a poetry machine feel like magic but what I had noticed was that there was no use of poetry or storytelling and it felt like such an oversight and fortunately this critique was met with agreement and a declaration ‘we’ve been thinking the same thing too’ – They were representatives of Tekniska Museet and had a dome in Stockholm they invited me to visit.

I couldn’t believe it, I was totally buzzing! This was an adventure and new paths were appearing. An invitation to throw some poetry around in a dome!

We exchanged LinkedIn profiles.

TIP: Always have these marketing tools updated and looking good! I quickly neatened mine up/updated it when I returned to my hotel room!

BARNEY STEEL – Marshmallow Lazer Feast

We spoke into technologies and projects, workflows and systems and AI. He was positive about the fortune teller machine and suggested that I make an app for it as most people have a camera on their phone which could be used to map the environment and put fortunes onto it. There was also a suggestion of different tones to the fortunes which i enjoyed thinking about and considering. Barney offered steady wisdom towards building ideas.

TIP: Listen to the experts. This chat with Barney was alleviating! I had an instinct that I should follow the full dome route and splinter off from my initial idea but had been worried that this would not be allowed. Barney’s attitude towards the idea though encouraging and emboldening also gave me permission to keep exploring.

I checked in with my IA producer to make sure I could reappropriate funds to Stockholm clear communication is important to make sure that full support, insights and encouragement can be given.

TEKNISKA MUSEET

As we were to meet int he afternoon, I spent the morning walking the city and visited the photography museum to fill me up with considerations as to how the image can be used. This helped me get into the mind-frame of creating, and how audiences move through immersive spaces.

Once in the dome, we attempted standalone poems moving around the space and throwing up different backdrops, and spoke about the format of live poetry gigs. I was shown other experimental full dome work for reference and decided to pull out an old script which had been set to music. It’ was not the idea I was there for but it felt like it would solve the problem we had been discussing and throwing around. We played extracts from my phone through the sound desk, and piloted coarasely through OpenSpace. Immediately we realised we had struck upon something interesting to come back to the next day.

The next day, a french delegation of artists and creative technologists were visiting the museum, and sat in to watch our R&D. We pulled together a 5 minute ‘scratch’ of what we had been working on – the tracks playing and OpenSpace as the set design – the response was overwhelmingly positive.

TIP: If you have an instinct to try something, even if it feels cheeky or random, offer it. You never know what it might open up.

LAUREN GILDERS PR

Lauren talked through my activity for the Explore grant and helped to orientate an intentional documentation of my activity. I was thinking about how to have a story to share in order to secure future funding. Having this in mind from the off has been very useful. This was a good framework to make sure I was documenting my process and experiences.

TIP: take pictures, videos and voice-notes. It’s all useful for reflection and joining dots.!

MARKETHALL, PLYMOUTH

Here I met Patrick and Lyndsey and was so grateful for their time. We met to discuss how we might build on some of the findings of Tekniska Museet. I was shown their dome which is absolutely gorgeous and everyone should visit it. they introduced me to some of the projects that they had been working on and encouraged me to not only write and perform but to consider making the visuals. They have an approach which is community led; everyone should be welcomed to play and engage and create with this technology.

TIP: This was a last minutes visit. Make the effort. Turn up. Meet the teams. This meeting changed the course of what I will do next, for the best. And I am so grateful.