Immersive Cinema

In this exploratory workshop, students will use a variety of tools (Audio recorders/360 cameras/Photogrammetry/Volumetric Capture/XR/Unity Programming) to tell immersive, interactive, and spatial stories. The aim of the projects will be to find forgotten and bring these lesser known stories of the past into the present ¿ including but not limited to Stanford's relationship to Indigenous communities, the formation of the Program in African and Afro-American Studies, the founding of Casa Zapata in 1972.
Students will use the conceptual framework of documentary media to inform their work, while also pushing toward new artistic languages and experimenting in the still-emerging form of XR storytelling. Over the course of the Arts Intensive, students will work in teams to create a series of short immersive pieces with an emphasis on experimentation. The course is time intensive: requiring some nights and weekends dedicated to production.
Example assignments:
Immersive Spatial Audio "Sonic History of Place" Choose a place on campus with a specific history. With a mix of archival sound recordings, sound effects/foley, and newly recorded sounds, create an interactive audio texture that evokes and tells the history of that place via sound textures only. (note: use of a narrator summarizing (parts of) the story is not allowed.)
Augmented Installation "Make history visible" Choose a place on campus with a specific history. Using Unity programming or Adobe Aero, 3D objects, VR Painting, and sound elements, create an interactive virtual installation that evokes the history of that place on campus.