Author: Barbora Holková
As part of the „KRK - Krakow Interactive panel debate VR - Reality 2.0. What is behind?“ programme held during the 56th Krakow Film Festival in Poland, the renewed futurist and creative technologist Carl Guyenette will open discussion and define the basic tendencies on the issue of the impact of virtual reality on human consciousness. Guyenette has been invited to join the panel by the Doc Tank programme manager Miriam Ryndová of the IDF, who will host the KRK Interactive program.
Bold predictions of what is to come in the future of human brain-to-brain interaction as a result of the coming media epoch that is virtual reality. Human neuronal structure has changed because of the Internet, VR and AR/MR will also cause changes. Ephemeralization, a term coined by R. Buckminster Fuller, is the ability of technological advancement to do "more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing," that is, an accelerating increase in the efficiency of achieving the same or more output (products, services, information, etc.) while requiring less input (effort, time, resources, etc.) Fuller's vision was that ephemeralization will result in ever-increasing standards of living for an ever-growing population despite finite resources. Fuller uses Henry Ford's assembly line as an example of how ephemeralization can continuously lead to better products at lower cost with no upper bound on productivity. Fuller saw ephemeralization as an inevitable trend in human development. Carl Guyenett in his presentation will raise the question whether VR is the early stages of us creating a language for direct brain-to-brain neuronal communication? We can awaken our empathy further than ever before with the power of VR; perhaps we'll be going a step further sooner than we thought.
After the panel with Guynett, the project "Storm" (creator Anrick Bregman) made by inovative studio UNIT9 will be presented. Their production uses the newest digital technologies and offers the projects for VR, game and film industry.
“Storm“ began as an experiment in virtual reality user design. We wanted to make something that doesn’t live clearly in either the film or the game world, but somewhere in between. From the moment players put on their VR headset, they’re immersed in a blinding snowstorm. In order to get to shelter, they must solve puzzles throughout the environment so they don’t freeze to death. They have fivteen minutes, and with every passing second, their bodies get colder and move more slowly. Storm explores how Virtual Reality can feel like a powerful, visceral experience that lets users play an important role. Jakub Jakubowski the Creative Technologist of the project "Storm" and Jakub Brzózka the PR manager at UNIT9, who will personally present the project in Krakow, say: „ Storm is very much short like a film, but one that viewers can be a part of. We wanted it to feel so real, that a player would actually feel cold playing it.”
The program of KRK Interactive has been organized by Institute of Documentary Film in cooperation with Krakow Film Festival for the second time. In the past year, Doc Tank presented William Uricchio, the Professor of Comparative Media Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Professor of Comparative Media History at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.
