‘Sea of Stories’ is an immersive VR art experience intended to deliver an interpretive narrative. In the experience, the viewer will be perched on the back of a bird flying over an ocean that represents all the stories ever told. This week the team has primarily been digesting the concept. Below are some of the creative challenges we foresee :
- The Sea of Stories could struggle with an amplified version of the Swayze Effect, which is essentially a lack of a relationship between the narrative and environment, with the viewer. The reason this problem is amplified is because of the context of the viewer in our narrative. In SoS, the viewer’s placement in the world is extremely specific, i.e., he/she is perched on the back of a flying bird which is traversing the world. This fundamentally enhances the question of relationship with the environment as it instantly throws questions such as ‘Who is the bird?’, ‘What is my relationship with the bird?’, ‘Why am I perched on top of it?’
- A large part of the Swayze Effect is the question : ‘Who is the viewer?’. What if we use this question in the narrative itself; the question itself could be a powerful storytelling element. It could be a question that is asked throughout the narrative and eventually answered at some point in the story itself.
- This could be resolved through the following. The viewer is a ‘story’ who is about to be born into the ‘Sea of Stories’, through the ‘Spring of Stories’. The bird is the vehicle that transports you to the ‘Spring of Stories’ for you to be born.
a) It stays true to the overall vision behind the piece, i.e. to be an Artistic VR Experience. There is a degree of interpretation involved. We can strike a balance between telling a story but also letting the viewer interpret for himself.
b) Innovation – The concept of exploring viewer identity inside the experience has never been done before.
c) The concept implicitly has a story arc that makes the world an important part of the experience : Example – The Sea of Stories is in danger and the bird needs to get you to the Spring as soon as possible.