From VR with Love

Peter Machen spoke to Ingrid Kopp of Electric South and the Tribeca Film Institute about the state of virtual reality filmmaking and the importance of ensuring that Africa contributes to the conversation from the outset as the technology grows and evolves.

Peter Machen: Hi Ingrid. Thanks so much for talking to me. I know that VR technology is still in its infancy but how do you think it will change the ways that films are made and viewed as the medium begins to establish itself?

Ingrid Kopp: I don’t think VR is replacing traditional film – the two mediums allow for different meaning and experiences. But I am excited about how VR – and I’m talking about both 360 video and interactive VR here – can tell different kinds of stories and reach people through mobile phone technology, which is so pervasive in Africa.

PM: How does the current VR experience differ from contemporary cinema? Are the essential narratives different to anything that has come before? Or do they echo the timeless quality of story-telling that is one of the fundamental definers of being human?

IK: I think storytelling is storytelling. But VR does allow for a different storytelling language to evolve, perhaps one that is based more on experience than narrative. That said, I think it’s too early for us to say what VR will and won’t become. This is a time for experimentation and glorious mistakes.

PM: Do you think that at some point, VR narratives/productions will supercede traditional cinema, or do you think that it’s a case of a new format/medium that will exist side-by-side with cinema as we know it?

IK: I hate predicting the future because I have no idea what will happen and I don’t believe anyone else does either, although some people are more informed and can make better guesses than others, I suppose. I will say that I’m a huge fan of radio – I listen to the radio every day, usually on my smartphone. I think new mediums disrupt old mediums and change them, sometimes drastically, but they continue to live side by side. I always quote Marshall McCluhan on this: "A new medium is never an addition to an old one, nor does it leave the old one in peace. It never ceases to oppress the older media until it finds new shapes and positions for them."

PM: Can you tell me a little about your experience of VR in Africa with Electric South? What led you to start Electric South?

IK: In 2015, producer Steven Markovitz and I were talking about organizing a VR exhibition and workshop for the African Futures event at the Goethe-Institut in Johannesburg. I had just moved back to South Africa after many years working in NYC, most recently for the Tribeca Film Institute. I wanted to get involved in some African VR and interactive initiatives, so I curated the exhibition and worked with Steven and his Big World Cinema team to produce the workshop.

Electric South was born out of this as both Steven and I believed that there was a real need to keep incubating and funding VR in Africa. This is the model for Electric South: we run workshops, work with African artists to fund and produce their work, and then work with partners on exhibition and festivals. For example, I recently curated the Virtual Encounters exhibition at the Encounters Documentary Film Festival. This is partly to create great contemporary VR and also because I firmly believe that African creators should be part of prototyping what VR will become.

PM: Are the African VR productions distinctly different to other VR productions from around the world that you’ve experienced? What do you think the continent can offer to the global VR industry?

IK: I think African artists bring a perspective that is unique. For example, Selly Raby Kane’s The Other Dakar is unlike anything I have seen before. She weaves the past and future of Dakar together in a delightful fashion that feels very much rooted in a real sense of place. I also think that The Nest’s Let This Be a Warning uses the form to create a really original thought experiment that feels particularly African and very universal at the same time. But I’m also just excited to see African artists making VR. It doesn’t have to be different necessarily. It just needs to be THERE.

I, like many others, am tired of stereotypical stories about Africa that don’t tell the full story and are often made by people who don’t live on the continent. There is nothing wrong with telling stories about other places – this curiosity is part of what makes documentary and filmmaking so wonderful. But the stories need to flow in all directions and too often they don’t. As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie so famously put it, “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”

PM: Although I, like many film-lovers, often end up watching films on my laptop at home, there is still an intangible magic to the shared experience of cinema, the strange joy of experiencing a narrative in the dark, often with strangers you’ve never met. Is VR destined to be an atomizing technology that moves us further away from each other, or is it capable of creating a communal experience in a similar manner to cinema?

IK: It’s interesting that the film world has claimed VR for themselves in some ways. But other disciplines are also occupying the space and I sometimes wonder if it is problematic to exclusively use film metaphors for VR. Reading is solitary and is not seen as particularly atomizing. It is possible to create wonderful, communal VR experiences at film festivals and the like, but I’m not sure that it is necessarily problematic for people to experience stories on their own. The one thing I will say is that whenever I have asked people who work in VR if they go home and put on a VR headset, most people say no. I think VR is absolutely social in the way that it is currently consumed – i.e. mostly at festivals, conferences and other exhibition venues.

PM: One of the objections to VR as a feasible medium at the moment is its cost and the cost implications of VR productions. But it seems to me that Moore’s Law will apply here as much it does to most technology and that cost will ultimately not be a major obstacle. Do you agree?

IK: Yes, I think the costs will absolutely go down, and I’m excited by the potential for VR as an accessible medium in Africa, through smartphones and WebVR for example. But right now it is very difficult for consumers to access VR – from working out which headset to buy to finding good content. To be honest, it’s a bit of a nightmare and everything keeps changing. I don’t know if VR in the near future will look like VR in its current form but, like I said before, I think it’s important that, as Africans, we are part of the prototyping period because we should be part of designing what comes next.

PM: At the moment, the VR interface consists of external glasses as well as other sensory interfaces such as responsive gloves. While the interfaces will no doubt change in time, do you think it’s possible that the interface will itself disappear and that at some point we will become neurologically connected to the technology?

IK: This is a terrifying question because as much as I have always been a total geek about technology, our future cyborg selves scare me. But yes, I think it is very probable that much of the interfaces will disappear and we will view mixed reality through contact lenses or implants.  I’m really concerned about the implications for some of these future scenarios though.

PM: In that light, what do you think of Shmera Passchier’s suggestion that VR, with its multiple eyes and hybridized nature, is in fact the first step – or one of the first steps – towards the existence of cyborg reality?

IK: I think we were already taking the first steps before VR with pacemakers and other medical advancements. And Victorians had stereoscopes and other devices, so there is a long history of augmenting how we see and experience reality.  But, yes, I suppose we are closer to a cyborg reality now. Although I think the risk of robots taking most of our jobs is probably much more pressing in terms of a future timeline.

PM: Finally, it’s clear that you are very excited by the future possibilities of VR. Are there possibilities that also disturb you? Do you think that there is a dark side to VR?

IK: I think there’s a dark side to any technology – I’m not that sure it’s necessarily greater for VR. I am a bit concerned about some of the flippant comments around VR and empathy, and I think we all need to think deeply as we continue to experiment in this space. After all, we may be partly responsible for how future generations learn to see and experience the world. We also need to develop a critical discourse around this space so that we are not only getting hyped-up articles from the tech press based in Silicon Valley. I know I keep saying this, but I also think it’s really important that when we talk about diversity in VR and Mixed Reality, we include the Global South. I think having a more diverse pool of people creating the future will ensure that it is more inclusive and open and accessible. And that’s a good first step for controlling against the darker potentials of the technology – I hope!