What 100 Years of Cinema Teaches Us About the Future of VR
A landmark show at the Whitney Museum of American Art is a highly immersive look at how technology has shaped film.
A s I approached the giant cardboard geodesic dome held together by binder clips inside the Whitney Museum of American Art, I caught the end of a conversation between a woman in her 80s and the intern handing out 3D glasses. “I’m sure this is what Salvador Dali would have done if he had been around today,” the woman said as the intern smiled and nodded, as if she had heard similar reactions before. The dome, Ben Coonley’s “Trading Futures,” houses a 360-degree 3D video in which visitors lie on beanbags and stare at the top of the dome as Coonley gives a lecture on the future of financial trading, taking on new personas as he moves through different environments. It’s just one piece in the Whitney’s newest exhibition, “Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art,” which opens today and explores the experimental ways artists have approached filmmaking since the start of the 20th century. The exhibition, curated by Chrissie Iles, is the first film-centered show at the Whitney’s new Meatpacking District location and includes 38 artists, spans over 18,000 square feet, and runs alongside a film-screening program.
“Whenever I make an exhibition it is because I feel an urgent need to do so,” Iles explained in an interview about “Dreamlands” earlier this year. “In this case, I was responding to a sea change that has clearly been occurring in the moving image, and its presence in digital, immersive space.” The sea change Iles describes only intensified in the time it took to build the show. When Iles began planning “Dreamlands” more than four years ago, Facebook was still two years away from its $2 billion Oculus acquisition and Ryot, the 360-video and VR production company that was purchased by Huffington Post for about $15 million earlier this year, had just been founded in Los Angeles. “Dreamlands” embraces the ways technology has enabled new forms of filmmaking. At the same time, it proves that the motivations and challenges facing producers of 360-degree films and VR today are not much different than what filmmakers dealt with nearly 100 years ago.
One of the show’s earliest works is “Triadic Ballet,” a film created in 1922 by German artist Oskar Schlemmer, in which ballerinas in geometric costumes move to music in robot-like motions. It exemplifies how artists and filmmakers in Germany—then the most industrially-advanced country in Europe—were pushing the limits of film and exploring the human relationship with machines. Questioning how technology changes how humans approach all areas of life will never get old, and in this case, Schremmer shows us a future where a classical form of dance, like ballet, may be transformed by technology.
It doesn’t take long after arriving at “Dreamlands” to understand the importance of sound in nearly all of the work. Because of the technical obstacles, early cinema was more about action and audio than narrative storytelling. Today’s artists have taken those restraints and used them to their advantage by removing narration and allowing sound to guide viewers through a hypnotizing experience. Andrea Crespo’s 2015 video “parabiosis: neurolibindinal induction” which sits alone on a large projection in an otherwise dark room, employs the sound of a scanning machine to turn images of cells constantly appearing, splitting, and rejoining into an experience so hypnotizing that visitors began sitting on the floor to get as close to the screen as possible.
The sort of complete immersion VR promises today is manufactured in “Dreamlands” by leading visitors down pitch-black hallways before reaching a piece of work. It’s a nod to early cinematic experiments where human bodies would appear from the darkness, making the viewer feel as if they’ve been transported just to see the show. Another experience, “Easternsports” by Alex Da Corte and Jayson Musson, takes a different approach to immersion by surrounding visitors in color, music, light, and the smell of oranges to deliver an almost robotic update of Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play “Our Town.” Visitors are given a choice of immersive experiences that don’t require headsets or equipment, and it’s a nice reminder that captivating experiences can be achieved in a relatively low-tech way.
As the show reaches its end, visitors are nudged into the future and shown the sorts of experiences that could be created if tech continues to change how we approach filmmaking. Hollywood makes an appearance in “Blade Runner: Autoencoded” by Terence Broad, who built an artificial neural network and showed it the 1982 sci-fi film. The end product is more a foggy, dreamlike representation of the movie than a replay. Then, visitors are introduced to “DiNA,” one of the earliest artworks to use artificial intelligence. Created by Lynn Hershman Leeson, DiNA takes the physical form of actress Tilda Swinton and allows visitors to interact. You talk to her and she’ll talk back.
“Dreamlands” explores the ways artists have used film to engage all five senses while also giving us a glimpse of the near future. It feels especially relevant at a time when we record videos on devices strapped to our heads to watch later on our smartphones, or use a cardboard headset to put ourselves in the shoes of a prison inmate in solitary confinement.
“Dreamlands” runs from Oct. 28, 2016–Feb. 5, 2017 at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Images courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art.
