Immersive Space Research Articles

Introduction

Introduction Becky K. Becker (bio) “We are now at least equally likely to look at the theatre experience in a more global way, as a sociocultural event whose meanings and interpretations are not to be sought exclusively in the text being performed but in the experience of the audience assembled to share in the creation of the total event.” —Marvin Carlson, Places of Performance Theatre and Space is a wide-ranging topic, opening discussion to myriad spatial arrangements, architectural styles, and historical contexts. Yet despite the global nature of the theme, no discussion of theatre and space quite works without consideration of the audience as central to the spatial relationships created. Whether we are reflecting upon the ancient Greek theatre with its semi-circular audience arrangement wrapping around the playing space, or the contemporary trend of immersive spaces in which audience members are often free to move about at will, our use of space in the theatre is intentional and inextricably linked to how we hope the audience will be impacted. We utilize space in particular ways to engage audiences in the storytelling experience; without the presence of a live audience, our efforts though not meaningless lack immediacy, as evidenced by recent “live” television broadcasts of popular musical theatre offerings such as Peter Pan and The Wiz. To that end, how effectively do different theatre spaces function? Is there a particular spatial relationship that lends greater impact to imagery in the theatre and, thereby, meaning? How have theatrical spaces changed over time? What happens when non-theatre spaces are used for theatrical performance? Is there a “politics” of space? Can space be “gendered”? And what happens when the performance space is a virtual space, rather than a physical one? These and many other questions were considered as thirty-five theatre scholars/practitioners gathered for Theatre Symposium 24, April 10–12, 2015, on the campus of Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia. Regardless of our focus on theatre and space, nearly every conversation that we had during our time together inevitably led us back to a living, breathing aspect linking them together: the audience. [End Page 5] In a time when so many options for entertainment are easy to access, it is no surprise that theatre practitioners and scholars are preoccupied with the role of the audience. While space undoubtedly impacts the rehearsal and production processes, its greater significance seems to rest in the impact a specific location and its use has on the audience. As Marvin Carlson observed in his keynote presentation, the theatre lobby functions as a kind of “mimetic airlock,” ushering audiences into theatrical space, presumably preparing them for their encounters with mimetic expression. Likewise in his closing remarks, Carlson aptly pointed to the ways in which audience expectations are sometimes thwarted—and possibly ignited—by nontraditional uses of space and nonmimetic performance modes. Whether traversing traditional theatre spaces—as discussed by symposium presenters Gregory Carr in his research on the African Grove Theatre; Tony Gunn in his examination of Edward Gorey’s theatrical designs; and George Pate in his reflection on Beckett’s stage directions—or venturing through decidedly innovative spaces—as described by J. K. Curry in her examination of Theatre for One; Susan Kattwinkel in her reflection on cultural spaces; Carla Lahey in her discussion of modern uses of medieval sacred spaces; Elizabeth Kling in her description of classical opera recontextualized in a bar setting; and Christopher Peck in his analysis of the immersive production Then She Fell—the audience’s essential role is to complete the theatre-and-space relationship. For without the audience there is no one to observe the traditional “fourth wall” of realism, witness the transgressing of that wall, or mingle with actors and other viewers in an immersive setting. Without an audience, the performance space becomes a kind of void, lacking the necessary component to let it live. Or does it? According to symposium presenter (and author in this volume) Lisa Marie Bowling, theatre spaces hold their own materiality, evoking “life” experiences that mark and shape their existence. Yet even in light of philosophical conceptions of a building’s richly storied materiality, space is indelibly empowered by the audience’s...

Regional Cultural Enterprises and Cultural Markets in Early Republican China: The Motion Picture as Case Study

The transition of the motion picture from foreign amusement to local enterprise was primarily the result of transnational commercial activity linking investors, entrepreneurs, and entertainment professionals. Amid the ongoing urbanization of China’s early Republican period, the enterprises emerging from this activity became increasingly profitable and, as a result, film production and exhibition became regularized phenomena, rooted in identifiable genres and standardized approaches to engaging audiences within the immersive space of the theater. By the early 1920s, those closest to the nascent industry were eager to legitimize its power by portraying the medium as a tool for political and social reform. However, commercial strategies and aesthetics remained relatively undisturbed despite this progressive rhetoric. In geographic terms, motion picture–related enterprises and culture remained strongly regional: affected and constrained by the non-Chinese national industries operating in politically divided China, by competing forms of local popular culture, and by existing geographies of exchange and infrastructure. The early Republican “experimental” period in Chinese cinema was, from an enterprise-centered perspective, one of numerous coexisting subnational cultural centers and zones.

(Un)Identified: détourned photographs from modern Siam

This visual essay weaves together images from an artistic research project with discussion of the critical and historical contexts which animated and informed it. The images – for the most part – are composites of late 19th and early 20th century photographic portraits discovered by chance in the National Archive of Thailand.In November 2014 these were exhibited at H Project Space, a Bangkok gallery located in a neo-colonial house built by an Anglo-Thai couple around the same time as the photographs were taken. For this, the composites were generated in real time using software designed by the author. These were projected at monumental scale to create two immersive spaces. In the interests of clarity, images from this exhibition and others generated during the visual research process are included here.The inquiry sought to raise questions about overlooked and taboo aspects of Thai history and to relate these to a political present characterised by mass censorship, curtailed freedom of expression and a heavily policed visual culture.

Virtual Space and National Division: Crow’s Eye View: The Korean Peninsula at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2014)

Abstract How can a visual cultural object represent national division, especially its inherent complexity in spatiotemporal contestations brought by the regurgitating history of antagonistic separation? This article’s central object of analysis is a recent architecture exhibition that conjures what I call “a virtual space of Korean division”—an immersive space of embodiment where visitors can experience a shift in conceptual framework through exposure to the unforeseen relations outside their previously held notions about national division, which, for the Korean peninsula, began in 1945 and solidified in 1953. Titled Crow’s Eye View: The Korean Peninsula, the exhibition was housed in the Korean Pavilion for the occasion of the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale. As an exhibition that presents Korean modern architecture and urban space, Crow’s Eye View prompts an intervention into the history of Korean division, operating on the spatial fields of embodiment, displacement, and mediation. The visual and spatial analyses of the exhibition include the display tactics, the origin story of the Korean Pavilion in Venice, and the colonial poet Yi Sang’s 1934 visual poem Ogamdo (Crow’s eye view), an eponymous poem from which the curators acquire the exhibition’s conceptual identity. Proposing an alternative to the existing representational frameworks of nationalism and Cold War bipolarity, this article argues that Crow’s Eye View and its virtuality reconfigure national division as a precarious state of being in common despite differences—a state of contingent coexistence and not a unified oneness nor an oppositional separation. In so doing, the exhibition thrusts the spatiotemporality of the Cold War, and the post–Cold War era, into virtual movement.

War Poems: A Transgression of Objective and Linear Imagery towards the Avant-garde in Animation

From a painter’s perspective, 3D stereo animation provides a fresh method of intensifying and isolating a pictorial space while conveying an illusion of a “real” notion of space and time. The resulting animated painting appears to share its physical space with the viewer. This paper describes the making of “Elysian Fields,” a 3D animated experimental short film that commemorates WWII. It aesthetically and philosophically examines the effect of the representational and abstract qualities of animation and their ability to convey a narrative. This paper will reflect on an art form that has resulted from cross?media exchanges between new media painting and stereoscopic 3D animation. The film’s extremely naturalistic figurative animation visually occupies a contradictory space in relation to the narratives told through surreal and abstract painting. Earlier abstract films by the author influenced the creation of the surreal war film and played a significant role in the structure of the narrative. Furthermore, Elysian Fields was adapted and calibrated for display on various 3D display systems, from large-scale immersive cinematic spaces to an immersive 320˚ theatre at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Ars Electronica’s Deep Space and gallery space installation. Winner of a number of accolades, including multiple “Best Animated 3D Short Film” awards, the film competed with another 56 films for the 86th Academy Awards Qualifying Screening Entry. (http://www.elysianfieldsfilm.com/)

Study on Immersive Installation that use Interactive Media Technology

This paper explores the development of the Ecliptic Wall installation, which involves kinesthetic interactions and immersive experiences. Ecliptic Wall, a media art installation that uses interactive media technology, has been developed as both an artistic work and as a designed lighting unit to aid in the research of the natural phenomenon of an eclipse. The interaction technique involves the use of ultrasonic sensors, optical detectors, an LED light, a stepper motor, and a mechanical hardware for generating patterns through an LED light. This work investigates the effects of a moving light, an ambient atmosphere, and the meditative quality of immersive spaces.

Metrics on spaces of immersions where horizontality equals normality

We study metrics on shape space of immersions that have a particularly simple horizontal bundle. More specifically, we consider reparametrization invariant Sobolev metrics G on the space Imm(M,N) of immersions of a compact manifold M in a Riemannian manifold (N,g¯). The tangent space TfImm(M,N) at each immersion f has two natural splittings: one into components that are tangential/normal to the surface f (with respect to g¯) and another one into vertical/horizontal components (with respect to the projection onto the shape space Bi(M,N)=Imm(M,N)/Diff(M) of unparametrized immersions and with respect to the metric G). The first splitting can be easily calculated numerically, while the second splitting is important because it mirrors the geometry of shape space and geodesics thereon. Motivated by facilitating the numerical calculation of geodesics on shape space, we characterize all metrics G such that the two splittings coincide. In the special case of planar curves, we show that the regularity of curves in the metric completion can be controlled by choosing a strong enough metric within this class. We demonstrate in several examples that our approach allows us to efficiently calculate numerical solutions of the boundary value problem for geodesics on shape space.

Geometry of curves with application to aircraft trajectories analysis

This article presents a survey of some metrics that can be used on geometric curve spaces which can be defined using samples points, known as landmarks, or by taking a space of immersions or embeddings and quotienting out by a group of diffeomorphisms in order to get rid of the influence of the parametrization. Finding the right metric for a class of problems is an active topic of research, with a special emphasis on applications related to computer vision or shape recognition. Similar problems arise in the field of air traffic management where the analysis of aircraft trajectories is one of the most basic issues. Despite its importance, only a few studies have been conducted on the subject, mainly due to the lack of suitable frameworks. The use of some of the shape spaces for representing aircraft flight paths, along with an example of trajectory classification will be given in the second part of the article.

An innovative audiovisual immersion space and its prospects for cultural heritage advancement

ARTE270 is an innovative experimental platform that combines panoramic optical projection video and photography with surround sound. The idea is to immerse the spectator/listener into audiovisual content both in realistic and artistic terms. It initially emerged in order to perform artistic experimentation on data derived from the flourishing natural environment of the Ionian Islands. Nevertheless, in the course of time, it comes up that a very important potential application lies with sustainable development. Our platform has been tried as part of a holistic approach for capturing, preserving and promoting further forms of cultural heritage as well as cultural networking through the new rendering capabilities of digital media.

Overview of the Geometries of Shape Spaces and Diffeomorphism Groups

This article provides an overview of various notions of shape spaces, including the space of parametrized and unparametrized curves, the space of immersions, the diffeomorphism group and the space of Riemannian metrics. We discuss the Riemannian metrics that can be defined thereon, and what is known about the properties of these metrics. We put particular emphasis on the induced geodesic distance, the geodesic equation and its well-posedness, geodesic and metric completeness and properties of the curvature.

Cultural Exchange Project between the University of Quindío and the University of Antioquia: Space of immersion in French as a Foreign Language

In this methodological article, we analyze the effects of an immersion activity on the cultural and communicative competence of a group of Colombian students from Universidad del Quindío and Universidad de Antioquia who learn French as a foreign language and who have an intermediate level of French. This academic and cultural exchange project is based on cooperative learning and project work. We carried out two guided tours in the department of Quindío and in the city of Medellin. Our results are based on the analysis we made of a questionnaire students answered, the evaluations they wrote about the project, the texts they produced and our reflections as teachers. The results demonstrate that learning becomes more meaningful in contexts where language favors both the access to linguistic and academic content and the creation of human, social and cultural links. This project strengthened the students' communicative and cultural competence but also their abilities for using technology and communication tools.

Deloopings of the spaces of long embeddings

The homotopy fiber of the inclusion from the long embedding space to the long immersion space is known to be an iterated based loop space (if the codimension is greater than two). In this paper we deloop the homotopy fiber to obtain the topological Stiefel manifold, combining results of Lashof and of Lees. We also give a delooping of the long embedding space, which can be regarded as a version of Morlet-Burghelea-Lashof's delooping of the diffeomorphism group of the disk relative to the boundary. As a corollary, we show that the homotopy fiber is weakly equivalent to a space on which the framed little disks operad acts possibly nontrivially, and hence its rational homology is a (higher) BV-algebra in a stable range of dimensions.

Isometric deformations of minimal surfaces in $\mathbb{S}^{4}$

We provide an elementary proof of the fact that the space of all isometric minimal immersions $f:M\to\mathbb{S}^{4}$ of a 2-dimensional Riemannian manifold $M$ into $\mathbb{S}^{4}$ with the same normal curvature is, up to congruence, either finite or a circle. Furthermore, we show that if $M$ is compact and the Euler number of the normal bundle of $f$ is nonzero, then there exist at most finitely many noncongruent isometric minimal immersions of $M$ into $\mathbb{S}^{4}$ with the same normal curvature.

Seeing in 3-D With Just One Eye

Humans can perceive depth when viewing with one eye, and even when viewing a two-dimensional picture of a three-dimensional scene. However, viewing a real scene with both eyes produces a more compelling three-dimensional experience of immersive space and tangible solid objects. A widely held belief is that this qualitative visual phenomenon (stereopsis) is a by-product of binocular vision. In the research reported here, we empirically established, for the first time, the qualitative characteristics associated with stereopsis to show that they can occur for static two-dimensional pictures without binocular vision. Critically, we show that stereopsis is a measurable qualitative attribute and that its induction while viewing pictures is not consistent with standard explanations based on depth-cue conflict or the perception of greater depth magnitude. These results challenge the conventional understanding of the underlying cause, variation, and functional role of stereopsis.

Redesigning the UK Emergency Ambulance

Redesigning the UK Emergency Ambulance

Formality of Sinha’s cosimplicial model for long knots spaces and the Gerstenhaber algebra structure of homology

Sinha has constructed a cosimplicial space X for a fixed integer N. One of his main result states that for N > 3, X is a cosimplicial model for the space of long knots (modulo immersions). On the other hand, Lambrechts, Turchin and Volic showed that for N > 3 the homology Bousfield-Kan spectral sequence associated to Sinha's cosimplicial space collapses at the page 2 rationally. Their approach consists first to prove the formality of some other diagrams approximating X and next deduce the collapsing result. In this paper, we prove directly the formality of Sinha's cosimplicial space and this allows us to construct a very short proof of the collapsing result for N > 2. Moreover, we prove that the isomorphism between the page 2 and the rational homology of the space of long knots modulo immersions is of Poisson algebras, when N > 3.

Moving and making strange

There is growing interest in designing for movement-based interactions with technology, now that various sensing technologies are available enabling a range of movement possibilities from gestural to whole-body interactions. We present a design methodology of Moving and Making Strange, an approach to movement-based interaction design that recognizes the central role of the body and movement in lived cognition. The methodology was developed through a series of empirical projects, each focusing on different conceptions of movement available within motion-sensing interactive, immersive spaces. The methodology offers designers a set of principles, perspectives, methods, and tools for exploring and testing movement-related design concepts. It is innovative for the inclusion of the perspective of the mover, together with the traditional perspectives of the observer and the machine. Making strange is put forward as an important tactic for rethinking how to approach the design of movement-based interaction.

Integrable deformation of critical surfaces in spaceforms

We investigate a Goursat-type transformation for Bryant surfaces and a few of its geometric features. The basic result is that, when regarded as a non-isometric group action on the moduli space of CMC1 immersions of a fixed surface, the Lawson correspondence is equivariant with respect to the more familiar Goursat transform on minimal immersions. This generalizes certain well-known deformations of critical surfaces and enlarges the number of explicitly computable cousin pairs, visualized here in a quaternionic upper-half space.

The number of constant mean curvature isometric immersions of a surface

In classical surface theory there are but few known examples of surfaces admitting nontrivial isometric deformations and fewer still non-simply-connected ones. We consider the isometric deformability question for an immersion x\colon M \to \mathbb R^3 of an oriented non-simply-connected surface with constant mean curvature H . We prove that the space of all isometric immersions of M with constant mean curvature H is, modulo congruences of \mathbb R^3 , either finite or a circle (Theorem 1.1). When it is a circle then, for the immersion x , every cycle in M has vanishing force and, when H\neq 0 , also vanishing torque. Moreover, we identify closed vector-valued 1-forms whose periods give the force and torque. Our work generalizes a classical result for minimal surfaces to constant mean curvature surfaces.

Auditory-visual integration of emotional signals in a virtual environment for cynophobia.

Cynophobia (dog phobia) has both visual and auditory relevant components. In order to investigate the efficacy of virtual reality (VR) exposure-based treatment for cynophobia, we studied the efficiency of auditory-visual environments in generating presence and emotion. We conducted an evaluation test with healthy participants sensitive to cynophobia in order to assess the capacity of auditory-visual virtual environments (VE) to generate fear reactions. Our application involves both high fidelity visual stimulation displayed in an immersive space and 3D sound. This specificity enables us to present and spatially manipulate fearful stimuli in the auditory modality, the visual modality and both. Our specific presentation of animated dog stimuli creates an environment that is highly arousing, suggesting that VR is a promising tool for cynophobia treatment and that manipulating auditory-visual integration might provide a way to modulate affect.