A Machine for Viewing

What does virtual reality as a medium have to do with cinema? This performance and VR experience revolves around the ambiguous relationship between the two. Beneath the audience in a physical cinema, one person wearing a VR headset is immersed in a virtual cinema. Their virtual experience is projected on the big screen of the real cinema. Three experiments in perception juxtapose the physical cinema experience with immersion in a virtual world.

This individual VR experience and public performance in one is guided by the three makers themselves. All three are moving-image makers, but with very different backgrounds. The playful creator of film essays Charlie Shackleton takes us through the history of films using unusual aspect ratios, academic Richard Misek considers what the best seat in the house is, and VR maker Oscar Raby ultimately takes us beyond the projection screen.