#[Immersive Experience]

[the-uncanny-dag]

[happyheidi]

date idea; you and me in a immersive monet exhibition

[schmergo]

Petition to replace all uses of the phrase 'Immersive Experience' with 'Pretend,' because I think that would fix a lot of problems in our society.

"Immersive Experiences" conjures up the following concepts: expensive, state-of-the-art, limited-time-only, once-in-a-lifetime, a staggering artistic achievement, sophisticated entertainment for adults, severe FOMO if you miss out. That's a tall order to live up to.

"Pretend" activities are fun, childish, require you to use your imagination, and don't claim to be anything more than what they are. If it turns out to be something even better, then it's just a pleasant surprise!

Any element that breaks the 'immersion' instantly deflates an 'immersive experience' like a pin popping a balloon, like glowing exit signs, exposed warehouse ceilings, staff members wearing New Balance Sneakers under their wizard robes, velvet ropes you have to stay between, but all of those things are perfectly welcome in, say, a haunted Halloween maze or a theme park ride because the whole point of those things is to be pretend. An 'immersive safari attraction' that doesn't completely fool my five senses into thinking I'm outdoors on an African savanna is a failure at a immersion but a pretty great "Pretend Safari" ride.

This is especially true if you're not good at or simply don't like pretending. Why do all of the same people who post about hating playing pretend with their kids ALSO book overpriced tickets to every "immersive experience" that comes to town?

Somehow it feels normal to charge $75 for a "King Tut's Tomb Immersive Experience" in a "secret location" that ticketholders only get directions to after booking, yet absolutely stark raving bonkers to charge $75 for a "Pretend King Tut's Tomb" located in a warehouse on the outskirts of town that shares walls with a Greyhound station and a lawnmower repair company, but they're the same thing, baby.

(And yes, if you're wondering, I did watch that new Jenny Nicholson video, or at least the first half of it. Hard to imagine charging $6,000 for "Pretend Star Wars.")

[innocentlymacabre]

EVERY STORY EVER TOLD REALLY HAPPENED.

Stories are where memories go when they’re forgotten.

If you've got eyes and ears in the right places, you're likely to come across rumours of a man who will find these memories. He’ll go off a-hunting, foraging for the stories you’ve forgotten.

I bring them home and show the world, distilling them into pretty little glass vials for you to peruse the wonders of the cosmos.

Take a look. Have your pick. Peruse the collection.

Keep up to date with new brews

Premium brews

Free curated tasting flight Frozen Summer: Stories from the dark and twisted crevices of the universe

About Me / Writeblr Intro / WIP Intros / Resources

[mindlessh0lezzz]

vr chat metaverse gaming pitch

(think magic kingdom online x kingdom keepers)

Dive into Hell's wild underworld inspired by *Helluva Boss*, where fans can live out their demon dreams across platforms: **mobile/PC** (*Habbo Hotel*-style socializing and room management) and **VR** (*VRChat*-style immersive missions and combat). Whether chatting in themed zones, fighting PvP battles, or running shady businesses, players create and customize demon avatars to rise in Hell’s hierarchy.

**Revenue**: Cosmetics, room decor, seasonal story arcs. Accessible for casuals on mobile/PC; high immersion for VR players. A dark, chaotic, multi-device playground for *Helluva Boss* fans!

lets go chat. - XjasperX

[ilikeit-art]

Van Gogh immersive experience

A Van Gogh immersive experience is any of a number of real-life or virtual reality (VR) exhibits of Vincent van Gogh's paintings. The for-profit events range across venues, organizers, and cities around the world, though the majority have been held in North America in 2021 and 2022. The events are typically set up in large gallery spaces. Images or videos of the artist's works are projected onto walls, ceilings, and floors, sometimes accompanied by animations, narrations, music, or fragrances.

[fogaminghub]

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💅🔥 Emily in Until Dawn—love her or hate her, you can’t deny she’s one of the toughest in the game! 😱 Her quick thinking and fierce attitude kept things intense the whole way through. 💥 Who else had a rollercoaster of emotions with her? 👀💀

Drop a 💅 if you were rooting for Emily (or not!) and let’s hear your thoughts on her survival in the comments! 👇👇

[ecoharbor]

📍London, England 🇬🇧

[sophieakatz]

Thursday Thoughts: Playing the Best Version of Myself

I’m not intending to permanently turn this blog series into a “Sophie listens to podcasts and talks about the Starcruiser” thing, but… this week I found myself once again listening to a podcast episode about Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser. It was The No Proscenium Podcast this time, and the episode was titled “Last Call at the Sublight Lounge.” One of the panelists, Kathryn, said the following about Halcyon passengers:

“I believe that a lot of the people on the ship were roleplaying that idealized version of themselves… Maybe you’re braver, bolder, more confident, more willing to stand up for what you believe in. Maybe it’s a version of yourself that you want to wish into being, but you’ve never had a chance to articulate it before.”

Funnily enough, this wasn’t the first time I’ve heard someone express this idea about the Starcruiser. On the final night of the show, I met up with a bunch of the performers after closing time. Emotions were running high, understandably, but a lot of those emotions were positive. There was so much love and gratitude in that space – for each other, and for what we had created and accomplished. Everyone kept talking about how much we’d grown because of the Starcruiser. Late in the evening, one of the performers attributed that growth to how we’d created a space where everyone who participated, everyone who came to play, could come be “the best version of yourself” – and playing as the best version of yourself changes you forever.

It gave me pause, when that performer said it, and I’m thinking about it further after hearing Kathryn bring it up again – because when I entered the Starcruiser as a guest, I didn’t think I was playing the best or idealized version of myself. I fully intended to not be myself. Sophie Katz knew too much about the Halcyon and its characters. I spent six months running around that ship, making sure that everyone else knew everything they needed to know about where to be, why they were there, and what to do while they were there. The beats of the whole two-day show are imprinted on my brain. So I thought that in order to have fun, and to avoid ruining anyone else’s fun with metagaming, I had to separate my guest-self from my writer-self.

Shira Alderaani Khesed was a character I made up almost two years ago. I wrote a poem about the destruction of Alderaan in Star Wars, and afterwards I fleshed out the character behind that first-person perspective. She was a woman without a homeworld, the daughter of Alderaanians who just happened to be off planet on their honeymoon when the Empire destroyed their lives. And as far as I could tell before my voyage, playing Shira would be about as far from acting as my real self as I could get without outright sacrificing my morals. Shira was a mechanic; she’d never had the good fortune to be able to pursue art as a career. She was cynical and cowardly, weighed down by the trauma she’d inherited and unable to imagine a better future – in direct contrast to my real-world optimism. She didn’t have a family or community to support her; her late parents kept her intentionally ignorant of her culture, believing that would protect her from her people’s genocide – unlike my real-life parents, wonderful and alive, who raised me to take pride in my culture. I wouldn’t have called Shira my ideal self; I certainly wouldn’t wish to be her or live her life!

I thought I’d successfully separated my real self from my Starcruiser-self.

But the performers on my voyage were quick to prove me wrong.

I mentioned last week that some of the performers dropped hints that they knew me. Gaya said I looked familiar. Raithe said he knew I understood what was going on better than anyone. Lenka outright added a bit to my backstory, saying she remembered how I helped repair the ship before this voyage.

There’s another example of this that I should mention now.

Captain Keevan’s path did not cross much with mine, but at one point late on the first day, I was standing with a friend in the lower concourse when the captain came out of the dining room. She approached us and asked how we were doing, mentioning she’d heard that I’d had some issues with Sammie the mechanic. I responded in character, explaining that Sammie had asked me to do something that I wasn’t comfortable with (lying to First Order Stormtroopers, which from Shira’s cautious-and-cynical point of view was a good way to get killed).

The captain told me that I shouldn’t have to do anything that made me feel uncomfortable or unsafe. Half joking, I looked at my friend and said, “Does that mean telling my friends to not sing anti-First Order fight songs?” (Which, yes, is another thing that happened. Video evidence here. Sophie loved that scene; Shira did not.)

“Well,” said Captain Keevan, “something like that could be a useful distraction, at times. I find that some people work well on the front lines, and their actions make it possible for others to do the important work they need to do in the background.”

“I do well in the background,” I said.

And she smiled and replied, “And I know you’re good at keeping things on schedule.”

As she walked away, I realized something about Shira. I’d thought that by making her a mechanic, I was making her unlike me. I’m not a hands-on hard-science building-things sort of person. I’d even been a bit nervous that someone might ask me something technical that I wouldn’t be able to answer.

But as Lenka had pointed out, as a mechanic, Shira was someone who had helped prepare the ship for this voyage. And as Captain Keevan had pointed out, Shira was someone who worked well in the background, supporting the people who were visible on the front lines.

In other words, Shira was the me I aspire to be, as a professional creative writer – not the person in the spotlight, but the person who makes it possible for other people to do well in the spotlight. The person who builds the world, who takes care of the details in the background, and who, if I’m doing my job right, goes unnoticed. You don’t notice a mechanic unless something breaks; when things go smoothly, you praise the captain. Similarly, you don’t notice a writer unless the dialogue is bad; when shows make you laugh and cry, you praise the actors and directors. That’s how it is. That’s the space I work well in and take pride in. Sure, I want people to know what I can do, and I want to get credit when I do a good job – so that I can continue to do this work that I love and make a living with it. I don’t dream about being a big flashy hero with crowds chanting my name. I want to be quietly essential.

I realized that Shira had an opportunity here – to learn to be that quiet, essential background player.

And as the show progressed, moments kept coming up that developed her story in that direction. When Lt. Croy ordered that a restraining bolt be put on beloved droid SK-620, Shira whispered to Sammie that he needed to go through it, despite the boos of the crowd, to keep the ship safe. The next day, Shira helped lure Lt. Croy and the stormtroopers downstairs to give Lenka and Saja Fen a chance to rescue SK. During the heist, Shira didn’t get one of the many “noisy distraction” jobs; instead, Raithe secretly passed Shira the gem, and she stood far away from the action, quietly keeping it safe while Captain Keevan ordered Raithe to turn out his pockets. Moment by moment, act by act, decision by decision, Shira was learning how much of an impact she could have on the galaxy from the background, even if – perhaps even because – most people didn’t know she was there doing the work that needed to be done.

Everything culminated in a scene that caught me off guard just as much in reality as in character. Shira wound up in the middle of the atrium, with a whole crowd of people’s eyes on her, telling Lt. Croy a series of objectively terrible lies.

It would be impossible for me to exaggerate how uncomfortable I am with improv. I’m fine with public speaking – I’m honestly pretty good at it – but I always prepare a lot in advance. If you’ve ever heard me say something cool, it’s because I spent at least ten minutes beforehand planning it out. I did not plan for this moment. And so, in that moment, even though I objectively knew that no real-world harm would come to me, my fear and Shira’s were one and the same. All I wanted to do was run away.

But I didn’t run away. I kept talking – babbling, really – because I had to keep Croy’s attention on me, so he wouldn’t turn around and see Raithe sneaking up to the mezzanine to steal the coaxium. Because that’s what Shira would have done, after everything she’d been through on that ship. She would play her part. She would make it possible for other people to do the more obviously important and visible job. And, as soon as the job was done and it was safe to do so, she would run away… straight towards Raithe, who promptly handed her the suitcase of coaxium. He knew he could trust her with it.

And me? I want to be trusted. I want to be someone that people can rely on. I may not literally want to be Shira Alderaani Khesed, but I want to have the kind of impact she had on the story unfolding around her, just by being me, hard at work in the background. Building worlds, preparing experiences, and keeping everyone around me on schedule. Relied on and appreciated by the people who matter most. Quietly essential to a life-changing experience, and given the chance to be so again, and again, and again. That’s the best version of me.

You wanna know the best part? Those two days I spent as Shira was not the only chance I had to be that best version of me. I now understand that the role that Shira played on the Halcyon was the role I played with Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser. I see it now more clearly than ever before. We don’t often get the chance to see ourselves so clearly, and I am so grateful to this cast for helping me see. They gave me such a gift. They gave everyone who set foot on that ship the gift of getting to be – and to learn that we are – our best selves.

I know what I can do for others – for a creative team, for an audience, for the world. I want nothing more than to do it again, and again, and again.

Let’s do it again, together.

[transacewithapan]

Van Gogh immersive exhibit pt. 4

[1toreyouapart]

Listen. I spent three hours in this place tonight and could have stayed longer. This place is incredible.

[pedrocoelho99v2]

my little corner of peace and solitude

My setup 🔥🎮

[zengardenphotos]

Meet the photographer

Reno, NV

[throuthewindow]

This week on "I Love This Thing So Fricking Much," we dove back into the world of immersive theatre with Kathryn Yu, co-founder of the Immersive Experience Institute and former Executive Editor of No Proscenium! Find out why she loves this form of storytelling so fricking much by listening to our latest episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the link above, or wherever you listen to podcasts!

[fogaminghub]

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🐜🔍 Up close and personal with the Empire of the Ants! 🔍🐜

Just took a close-up look at an ant in the game, and the details are INSANE! 😱📸 Every antenna, every tiny leg—it feels like you’re face-to-face with the real thing! Seeing the world through their eyes makes the game even more epic. 🌍✨

Ready to step into the miniature world? Tag your friends and get a look at life from an ant’s view! 👀👇

[tobylookslike]

Just another day in the office...