Space in "Save London"

Much of the feedback from our original pitch involved the suggestion that we should move away from science-fiction elements and instead focus on “reality”. As such, for the game element of the project, we decided to create a virtual space that was a recognizable area in London (the project was, after all, meant for those people that live in London) for the user to walk around and experience – in the end we settled on Regent’s Park, and established this setting by filming the iconic panoramic view of London from Primrose Hill. Aside from the game element, we also filmed general shots of present day London to anchor the viewer in the current time before moving on to the game and the “future” of London’s great park.

Interactive cinema “gives the viewer the option to influence the storyline to some degree” (Tanak, 2015). However, we chose to allow the user to not only influence the storyline, but also the visual space around them. In selecting certain personal responses to environment-related questions during the game, the virtual reality space would shift and morph into something different. This was done using the appearance of visual graphics depicting negative images such as glitches, drought and fire, and by causing the audial space to become distressing – a shift away from the nature sounds and heartbeats the user could originally hear. This makes for quite an uncomfortable experience, and the performative aspect to the game links the space directly to the user, and challenges their perception of the way they live in the space (i.e. London).

We were also aware that the shifting of a familiar and comfortable space, such as the beautiful and unassuming Regent’s Park, to a negative visual and audial experience can be very confrontational and emotional for the viewer. This is best demonstrated by Ørsted’s (2017) experimental film about climate change and the way it will change what we believe to be “home” (i.e. the house in which we live), associating negative feelings with what was once a peaceful and cosy place by linking it to the larger ecosystem – our planet. As such, we knew that morphing the place Londoners call “home” (in this case, a general area rather than a specific house) into something unrecognizable and terrifying would elicit an emotional response that connected the viewers to the wider problem at hand. We hoped to prevent the distancing that certain traditional climate change films incur – for example, it is harder for us to relate to the melting of the Arctic icebergs when compared to the destruction of the place in which we ourselves live. Therefore we hope to have demonstrated the desire to exploit the use of space in order to elicit a specific, personal, and emotional response in the user.

We used this shifting of space to help the user take notice of their individual agency and potential to change the path of climate change. As such we believe we used space in a meaningful and challenging way, by causing the user to be self-reflective and self-critical with a heavy dose of self-awareness (due to the performative aspect of the project), which is not super common in game-style interactive media – for example, Tanak further explains that for a person to be “immersed” in a game, one must become less aware of their environment and their self-awareness must decline. However in our case, we hope to have challenged this notion by instead demonstrating how self-awareness can be of paramount importance in order to fully appreciate the aims of the project. However we would also hope that the user would be fully immersed in our virtual reality environment – which would therefore be in conflict with an increased amount of self-awareness. It may be difficult to turn off, in our minds, the awareness of the space we physically inhabit and not our own self-reflective thoughts. I am comfortable saying that I believe the nature of our film means one can be immersed while being self reflective; however, if not, it is an interesting gap to be bridged in the future.

Bibliography

Tanak, N. 2015. ‘Interactive Cinema. A mini guide for understanding and producing a 360-degree interactive movie.’ MediaLAB Amsterdam.

Filmography

Ørsted 2017. Love your home [Video File], retrieved from http://loveyourhome.orsted.com/#en