Julia M. Ritter
Published: 2020
Total Pages: 289
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"In October 2017, four internationally influential practitioners of immersive experiences gathered at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center on Staten Island in New York for a panel discussion on the creation of immersive productions. The panel, entitled "All the World is a Stage," was part of the Future of Storytelling Festival 2017 (FoST FEST), advertised as "the world's leading immersive storytelling event." During this discussion, each of the four panelists described examples of their work. Hector Harkness, Associate Director of Punchdrunk International, explained how the company created productions that "rip up the rules for the audience" so they can "go beyond the boundaries of closed environments." Food technologist, experience designer, and multimedia artist Emilie Baltz described inviting audiences to step up to a microphone and use their tongues, teeth, and lips to play musical popsicles in an installation called PopStars. Jon Sands, founder of Poets in Unexpected Places, revealed how his strategic placement of poets on subway cars across New York City turned commutes into impromptu poetry slams for unsuspecting riders, some of whom joined in by improvising their own poetic works. Justin "JB" Bolognino, CEO (Chief Experience Officer) of META, an experience production company, described his commissioning of Jon Morris, artistic director of the Brooklyn-based Windmill Factory, to design a music-festival queue into an experiential artwork. Entitled Right Passage, the work was a "room-scale sound and light performance installation" involving moving walls that guided festival participants efficiently into the concert venue (Windmill Factory 2017). Through their detailed descriptions of how their productions organized the bodies of performers and spectators in space and time, the panelists hinted at the presence of choreography in their productions"--