November 8, 2022
[SHOWCASE] Building Immersive Space of Dreams
Building Immersive Space of Dreams
In “The Showcase,” six local heavyweight teams across areas of entertainment, interdisciplinary art, education, and e-sports, are invited to the live session to share their experience and exchange on how to successfully build immersive space from incubation, as well as industry trends and potentials of various applications.
World-class new media content and technology provider, Brogent Technologies, uses “i-Ride Flying Theater” and “VR eSport Center” as examples to share cases of industry-government-academia cooperation, as well as development from R&D of new technologies to applications. Creative Director Escher Tsai of “Dimension Plus,” a new media creative and curatorial team, also shares the experience of operating large-scale immersive performances and discusses the new industrial revolutions ignited by the fusion of art and technology.
The hideous Titans attack in the final battle before the end of the world. All we can do is to step up and fly into the sky to fight the violent Titans…Brogent Technologies’ “i-Ride Flying Theater” launched the “Attack on Titan” moving chair and giant ball screen in collaboration with Japan’s Kodansha. Combined with sound effects, lighting, scent, or even wind, audiences are treated to a most authentic virtual flying experience. The show was an instant hit, becoming another case of Taiwan’s successful reverse selling of licensed IP back to Japan.
With decades of experience in somatosensory technology, Brogent Technologies has built nearly 90 somatosensory facilities of various sizes across the world. In Taiwan, other than industry-government-academia collaborations with National Sun Yat-sen University and Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Borgent Technologies has also introduced audience to new interactive horizons through its sites of operations, including i-Ride Flying Theater and VR eSport Center. “This industry emphasizes five senses, and audience members should be able to perceive everything from sound, light, color, scent, to motion,” said Director Peng Yan-lun of Attraction Operation Center. “Good stories are the most important key.” With people now having increasing demands for audiovisual stimulation in the digital age, immersive experience has blossomed into diverse forms in the creative industry; in addition to theme parks and audiovisual entertainment, other areas, such as museum, tourism, and education, have all shifted focus onto somatosensory applications in recent years. Regarding the future of the industry, it is truer than ever that people should “expand ideas and dreams and strive for realization, and a bright future awaits once you weather through all the adversities.”
Web 3.0 has arrived. With the development of high-speed internet and equipment, immersive performance and remote co-performance offer artists another cross-dimensional creative possibility. New media art team “Dimension Plus” that engages in creation, production, and promotion, has organized a number of immersive art exhibitions and performances, such as the “Taoyuan Art x Technology Festival” and “reconnect 2022: BORDERLESS CANVAS” remote co-performances at National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts and Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab, and “RE: CAVE” at National Taichung Theater, and initiated the “5G Cloud Computing Aesthetics Platform,” relocating high speed computing to the Cloud to overcome the limitations of exhibition spaces and artists’ equipment.
“We are looking for a new medium and experience method. Through artistic exhibition of new media and interdisciplinary production, we have defined it as the ‘New Canvas’,” said creative director Escher Tsai. Facing the trends of the industry, Tsai points out that when immersive experience becomes mainstream, audience will have increasingly higher demands; artists, on the other hand, need to create immersive works of larger scales and higher specifications, or even “organic contents” that are capable of real-time interaction and modification. These will all be new challenges.
At this year’s TCCF – Showcase, Creative Director Tsai will revisit past production experience through the perspective of site establishment, introducing remote co-performances and interdisciplinary performances achieved through the “5G Cloud Computing Aesthetics Platform.” “This is future tense. Immersive contents will go way beyond this, as there are still all kinds of possibilities, in which everyone can find a new form of art and performance,” said Tsai. The Showcase will invite “C-Lab Future Vision Lab – An Immersive Experiential Space,” “VR Film Lab,” “National Taiwan Science Education Center - The Black Box,” “i-Ride Flying theater & VR eSport Center,” “Ambi Space one,” and “Moondream Reality MR Theater” to jointly explore possibilities of producing immersive contents, with an aim of encouraging creators to transcend spacetime and disciplines and explore more diverse ways of presentation and cooperation.
