Project Esper: Respatialising Cinema

Have you dreamed of standing ‘inside film’, navigating around the Nostromo in Alien, or exploring inside the Bates Motel in Psycho? What would happen if we could make the places of cinema, spaces for audiences to be inside? Being ‘inside’ the story space has long been a dream of Science Fiction. From Deckards use of the  Esper Machine to navigate inside a still photo, or Neo’s life inside The Matrix, to the Starfleet’s adventures on the Holodeck. We have long dreamt of being ‘inside’ the story space? New technologies are allowing us to explore this as a possibility.

In this panel presentation Senior Lecturer Dr Alan Hook, and Creative Technologist Gerard Dunleavy will present experimental workflows using immersive media and AI to ‘respatialise cinema’ turning shots from films into spaces that can be navigated and explored. The panel will walk through the experimental workflows, present ideas about what this might mean, and raise questions about how this might change our relationship to cinema.