As well as supporting others to make and exhibit digital and immersive art, I’m also developing my own creative projects.
Fulldome film
My most recent project is with creative duo Elsewhere in India, who use archive footage and immersive video animation for live performances and installations. I have been working with them to adapt their live AV show for domes and planetariums.
Funding permitting, I intend to use my journalistic background, knowledge of fulldome production, and networks in planetariums around the world to work with them on a short creative documentary about India’s cultural heritage, using the creative they did for their live dome show. This film can then be programmed in planetariums to entertain and educate during the 80th anniversary year of India’s independence.
Fulldome art
Thanks to the Developing Your Creative Practice fund from Arts Council England, I was able to get more hands-on with the creative process for fulldome. I worked with CultVR fulldome venue in Cardiff and academic partners to create a fulldome concept I wanted to test: a system that responds to emotions via facial recognition. To our knowledge this is the first time these technologies have been successfully combined.
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I also shot and edited sections of 360 degree video as part of the DJ Yoda fulldome show.
360 degree video
With funding from Innovate UK, Live Cinema UK developed an experimental 360 degree travel and nature video app, so any smartphone user could view 360 videos immersively using a cardboard headset. This was based on my personal interest in the medium and its potential for immersive escapes, even for audiences without the access to or ability to use a virtual reality headset.
The project is called Head Holiday and was a response to issues caused by lockdowns, in this case we wanted to address an increase in anxiety for those without access to nature.
Although the cardboard viewing device was already available and in use – for example for immersive viewing of videos on YouTube – there was previously no single app with a curated selection of travel and nature videos.
This is sample of the kind of experiences available (scroll around for a full 360 degree view, and click the settings wheel to raise the image quality to 8k).
Social media video
This exploration of different environments using 360 degree cameras is a labour of love and an ongoing series. This allows me to document other immersive experiences and to share them with others.