Everything Immersive This Week (09/14/2019)
Bump, bump, bump all night long…
It’s that time again: and we’ve got new features for you along with our regular round-up.
Below you’ll find our latest Inside Immersive video, taking us behind the scenes on LA’s Haus of Creep, which opened this weekend.
I also found myself updating our Glossary, which hadn’t gotten any editorial attention since last August, with some new and refreshed terms. I’m going to start adding a “term of the week” at the end of this note each week.
In LA we spun up our annual Spooky Season Spectacular. The newsletter went out, and the post is live, ready to be updated as we uncover even more creepy goodness for Halloween Time.
And now... here’s your first term of the week, and it’s a classic with a freshly condensed def:
Immersive Theatre — a play that you play.
Check out more in The No Proscenium Glossary.
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INSIDE IMMERSIVE: HAUS OF CREEP
Enter the Haus of Creep as director Justin Fix (‘Creep LA,’ ‘The Willows’) brings us inside the creative process of the latest edition of JFI Production’s annual event.
This year 7,000 guests will come face to face with the bizzaro characters in a dark parody of the pop-up museum phenomenon.
ON THE PODCAST THIS WEEK
Choreographer Koryn Ann Wicks stops by the studio to talk about her work exploring immersive in dance. Her I Love You So Much, SQUEEZE ME TO DEATH is getting a remount at the Bootleg Theater this October in LA, and her and her team recently took home the grand prize of the LA Immersive Invitational for their work CASTING.
We dive in on the language of dance and immersive in this one.
FROM THE WIRE: SHOWS, EVENTS, & EXPERIENCES
Everett, MA: Join the Resistance!
NYC: FOUND, The Illuminati Ball,
Long Island, NY: Dreams and Nightmares, It All Goes Horribly Wrong: Cinematic Horror Experience
Frederick, MD: JEKYLL & HYDE — An Immersive Musical Experience
Miami: CURRENTS: Men I Trust presented by DEFY
Salt Lake City: A Brief Waltz in a Little Room: 23 Short Plays About Walter Eyer
Englewood, CO: Natura Obscura (Extension)
LA: Whispers In The Dark — Unsolved Murder Séance, Terror DTLA, Dismember The Alamo
Remote: Mad Deep Dish
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Submit your show to us here or at pitches@noproscenium.com.
COMMUNITY
NYC: Join Everything Immersive in New York City for a meetup on October 9. RSVP on Facebook.
LONDON: The Gunpowder Plot presents SANDBOX | Immersive Worlds and Playable Spaces on 28 & 29 September. Tickets on sale now for a weekend of panels and discussions on creating immersive worlds.
APPEARANCES
Find members of the NoPro team and Everything Immersive family in your neck of the woods
September: Ricky Brigante & Noah Nelson — VIFF Immersed
October: Kathryn Yu — Indiecade 2019
REVIEWS
From No Proscenium:
From David & Lisa Spira of Room Escape Artist:
Infirmary at Michigan Escape Room was a fantastic escape game. The narrative had some intense and eerie twists, without turning into a horror experience.
We’ve generally enjoyed our experiences in trailer-based escape rooms and have been impressed with the ingenuity of these creators. Mobile Escape Room Texas surprised us, however, by raising the bar with Alamo Escape: The Race to Liberty.
STORIES & MORE
From NoPro:
From Kathryn Yu, NoPro:
I’ve been digging the book Situational Game Design by Brian Uptown a lot lately; it’s an experience-centric methodology to analyze game design.
The book defines the act of “play” as something which is by necessity considered “embodied,” something is created in moments of “aimlessness” and “stillness” and not just interactivity, and as something that cannot exist without the player because play only truly exists within a player’s mind.
Upton also makes a really useful distinction when discussing “Game As Designed” as separate from “Game as Understood” versus “Game as Experienced.” I have a feeling I’ll be using a lot of his frameworks in the near future.
From David & Lisa Spira of Room Escape Artist:
Best practices for walkie-talkies as escape room hint systems:
From Kellian Adams Pletcher, Green Door Labs:
It’s 1942 and Club Drosselmeyer is back! Come visit our booth at the Boston Festival of Indie Games to crack some codes, and maybe get some hints on what adventures we’re cooking up this year. Save the date for December 8th, 10th-13th!
Caroline Murphy, head of Incantrix Productions is at it again to produce FIG, Boston’s Festival of Indie Games and the biggest Indie Games Festival in the US. Come by to play board games, video games, tabletop roleplaying games, larps and even a little immersive theater!
From Laura E. Hall of Timberview Productions:
Every Game in This City is a podcast about ten game designers, researchers, and curators who met up in Malaysia to try and play every escape room in Kuala Lumpur. New episodes every other week.
—
Neurocracy, a writing project by Joannes Truyens (@playthroughline) that depicts a sci-fi world set in the year 2049, using the medium of a web-based encyclopedia that exists within that world
From Kent Bye of the Voices of VR podcast:
I posted 13 interviews on the future of neuroscience & VR totaling nearly 8 hours of Voices of VR podcast content. Experiential design is an interdisciplinary melting pot, and understanding the mechanics of perception will change your design — and being able to standardize experiences in XR is revolutionizing training & neuroscience research. This post gives an overview of this latest series, and has an additional 21 interviews from the archive about a broad range of neuroscience topics.
From Ricky Brigante of Pseudonym Productions:
Our Fringe experience “Question Reality” has already created a buzz in Philadelphia with players returning multiple times to explore the unnerving world of Obscurum again and again. But as our Fringe run ends, the arrival of Dark Passage draws closer, an — an all-new immersive Halloween experience that debuts in Philadelphia on October 4th. In the meantime, players can continue to engage with this wild world online, discovering not everything is ever exactly as it seems. Tickets are on sale now for Dark Passage.
Immersive design and technology are finally beginning to command mainstream conversations as colleges and sports take note of where this medium may go. With language like “audience members encouraged to explore the space and interact directly with actors and their surroundings” and “the technology is undoubtedly impressive, will we ever get to the point where it becomes more popular than being physically present at the game?” — the future of immersive is still uncertain, but is definitely starting to find its footing.
THE DISCOURSE
Discussions and posts from Everything Immersive & Twitter:
NOW FUNDING
I Love You So Much, SQUEEZE ME TO DEATH
LA: Koryn Ann Wicks, the creator of I Love You So Much, SQUEEZE ME TO DEATH, and the Immersive Invitational Grand Prize winning Casting is raising funds for the remount of I Love You So Much, Squeeze Me To Death at the Bootleg Theatre this Fall.
NYC: ’BLACKOUT’ Immersive Halloween Show
Daemonologie: Smoke & Mirrors
Boston: An immersive game theatre experience where you will decide a woman’s fate.
The Ode at Pint’s End
Chicago’s Birch House preps an immersive folk tale
CHICAGO: The Ode at Pint’s End, written by Lauren N. Fields and Janie Killips, is an epic folktale that features traditional Irish music and new music by Janie Killips.
As they celebrate a full year on dry land, three Irish sailors recount the story of a shipwreck that changed their lives and the secrets they found at the bottom of the sea that still haunt them. Their tale unfolds in increasingly magical ways with the help of the mystical Merrows, the sailors’ wives, and the audience. The Ode at Pint’s End explores the journey from ambition to wisdom, the weight of our choices, and how we learn to let go.
PROFESSIONAL OPPORTUNITIES
Jobs, Grants, Gigs, and more
CASTING
NYC: WHITE LIGHTS — AN IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE OF ETERNITY
Virtual Being Developer Grants
Deadline September 17th
Sundance New Frontier Story Lab Applications
Deadline October 1
Immersive Design Residency
Applications accepted year round. Fall session: November 8–13, 2019
ODYSSEY WORKS WORKSHOPS & INTENSIVES
SF: Empathy and Experience Design Workshop by Odyssey Works. October 20th.
Austin: Odyssey Works Design Intensive. Oct. 12 & 13
NYC: Odyssey Works Design Intensive. Nov. 9 & 10.
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