bathroom nauseous and uncomfortable
before going back out to the dining room
to have dinner with my husband and our
two kids later I drove to an abortion
clinic I held the hand of my friend as
we crossed a line of angry pro-life
activists who yelled curse words at us
and poked their head into our car I
thought I’d join a cult
and in the elaborate initiation ritual I
had my hands bound and dipped in wax
chemicals thrown in my face and in the
final seance I watched as one of my
peers was murdered I traveled to the
Caribbean and danced with a cabana boy I
think he fell in love with me because
when I came home he’d sent me this
postcard all of that happened to me this
year it’s crazy to think about all those
experiences I mean the grease in the wax
stuck in the hands on my arm the hairs
on my arm the cold metal of the tray in
the seance in the moments before she
died the inner monologue in my head as
those people were yelling at us as we
approached that clinic and the stares at
my back that I knew were there when we
were in that beach club now how was this
possible right I am NOT a woman I’m not
married I’m not pregnant
I’m not gay and I’m not a cult member
but I am obsessed with a new medium a
medium that doesn’t really have a name
or has many names depending on who you
ask
immersive theater transmedia escape
rooms virtual reality augmented
these are all sort of examples of
entertainment in this new medium it is
in the very earliest days the very
earliest days of this entertainment I
mean for comparison it’s a little bit
like film in the 20s at that time we
really didn’t know what it meant to do
storytelling in that medium how long
should it be should there be audio how
about music nobody really knew and so
there was a lot of experimentation that
was happening or in the case of
computers computing in the 70s how do we
get information in and out of these
things and what’s a computer really look
like and it took Alan Kay to define the
laptop and Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak
to commercialize the desktop and we now
have the computer that we all call that
we understand to be a computer today in
the case of film it took Citizen Kane
and Star Wars and Midnight Cowboy and
countless other explorations in this
space a hundred years of explorations to
land at long shots and fast cuts and the
22 minute TV show and the 90 minute
movie and we call that Hollywood and
it’s sort of funny here on the Dolby in
the Dolby Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard
many of you know there’s sort of more
refrigerator magnets than there are like
movies being made and that’s because
Hollywood’s a concept right it is a
shorthand for talking about the industry
of 2d and 3d storytelling whether you’re
in Los Angeles or Atlanta or Vancouver
or Bulgaria or wherever there are great
tax credits for filmmaking now I would
like to invite you to a new place a new
place that well since it doesn’t really
have a name let’s just make it easy and
we’ll call it new Hollywood and new
Hollywood is a very special place
special because of its immersion the
fact that it engages all of your senses
right not just sight and sound but touch
and taste and all these different things
now in new Hollywood you are the
character and I don’t mean controlling
the character like with your thumbs like
a video game
I mean more like Michael Douglas in the
game right where the game is all around
you everywhere and everybody’s a party
of into in it if you think about the
trend in entertainment it’s about
increasing your immersion so a book you
look you are a passive observer and you
do all the imagining a movie is over
there you can sort of silently judge it
and the the imaginings been done for you
but you’re still this passive observer a
video game maybe gives you some control
with your thumbs we in a Kinect you can
kind of dance around in front of it but
you’re still sort of tethered to the
screen we’ve heard a lot about virtual
reality today that’s really interesting
you now get to control the angle but you
know what’s even more immersive than
that the most high resolution of all
real life it’s awesome
and you know super immersive haptics
full-body tracking right actually
haptics that can kill you you know it’s
great mmm and as my friend ryan Lucan
says picture of a glass of water is no
substitute for drinking that glass of
water so a movie in its most simple form
is a great bit of entertainment
something to occupy our time a horror
might spur some adrenaline a good comedy
might spur you to laughter but they also
have the capacity for real change a good
drama might teach you some interpersonal
lesson that you can apply to your own
life a good documentary might reveal the
challenges of facing our earth or its
people and spur you to action really
great one mission blue from Sylvia Earle
talks all about the state of our oceans
now in new Hollywood the capacity for
that change is even more incredible
because the fact that it is engaging all
of your senses makes that memory all the
more permanent and that is really
incredible because now you can actually
take on the role of somebody else
someone that you don’t know but it would
never be accessible to you a perspective
that would never
be available to you that’s amazing you
know how they say study in the room you
take the test that’s because while
you’re sitting there studying you’re
gonna be doing your reading or whatever
it is but there’s also smells and look
in the room and all the other things so
that when you’re on there a test day
those same triggers might help you
remember that piece of information that
you need we’re taking that test and this
is really powerful in new Hollywood
right because there is no shortage of
hard problems right and and we have
obviously in America a lot of a big a
big divide and all over the world
division between between our people and
the the the thing that is so incredible
is imagine being able to empathize it
and and and imagine what that person on
the other side of the line is thinking
right if we also if we say both sides
are crazy
then surely there’s some assumption
wrong somewhere I would like to take you
on a little tour of a number of the
places inside of New Hollywood that that
I’ve explored and and you know would
invite you to to explore as well so the
one that most people will recognize is
something called Sleep No More and this
is in New York it’s a hundred thousand
square foot building on the lower west
side and this is an immersive theater
production but an immersive theater
production doesn’t necessarily mean
there’s a stage and an audience right
and this particular one it’s a hundred
thousand square foot building and it’s
themed with all variety of different
stuff from taxidermy to plants and it’s
incredible and when you first arrive
they give you one of these masks you put
it on and they say no talking no
cellphones enjoy your stay
and for the next couple of hours you’re
wandering around this environment
wherever you want to go if you want to
go left you go left you want to go right
you go right and you see other actors
that are there other other audience
members that are there with their masks
but every now and again you see people
walking around that don’t have a mask
and you can follow them and if you do
they are going to have some performance
and pretty soon after a little while you
realize gosh these are scenes from
Macbeth now you could go back to this
production a couple of times and see a
different experience every time
because remember your self-directed you
get to go wherever you want it’s
incredible
there’s a trend sweeping the nation
called escape games he started in in in
Russia and and and China and the idea is
you and some number of friends maybe
five six ten get locked in a room right
you literally all show up you get locked
in a room and you have to figure out how
to get out and some of them are themed
like detective and some of them are
themed horror and you’re all gonna
figure out what what the puzzles are
there and get you out of this room
my company two bit circus got obsessed
with this domain we actually started
making this kind of immersive
entertainment inspired by the game in
2010 and built this Space Station this
spaceship so that you could feel what it
was like to pilot a spaceship and it
took all of you somebody being the
navigator somebody being the gunner
somebody being the pilot virtual reality
is we’ve been talking a lot about we’ve
been hearing a lot about it today was
here in the 90s it looked like this
pretty ridiculous and it was super
expensive then people got nauseous it
was very expensive to create the content
and so it didn’t really work but now
it’s back and it’s really back because
all those things got solved the
hardware’s awesome the content
production is awesome and looks more
like this this is the HTC vive really an
incredible version of it and and at a
2-bit we got very excited about this
domain made our own 360 camera wrote our
own stitching software and strapped it
to an Indy car we drove it at 200 miles
an hour around a racetrack so that you
could safely sit in a motion platform
put on a headset and feel what it was
like to drive in an IndyCar fan blowing
there in the face the seats moving
around and sort of goofy because after
doing that we you know we’re a bunch of
nerds that don’t really like sports we
got started doing lots of sports stuff
we ended up doing something for the NFL
we strapped our camera to our robot so
that you could it could run the the
touchdown pass I learned what a punt
return was and we then installed this
thing at the at the Super Bowl so that
we could put 30,000 people through what
it’s like to be the football player
right everybody likes to watch football
but what is it like to be the player you
know trying to be tackled I went to
Copenhagen and and did this five person
multirole virtual reality dinner I’ll
give you a second to unpack that and and
it was it was wonderful once we’re right
before we sat down the artist said pick
a roll mom dad the oldest son his new
girlfriend or the youngest son but he’s
like try to be somebody or not normally
so I was like okay great I’ll be the mom
and sure enough we started I’m in the
bathroom I looked down I’m in a dress
I’m pregnant and the story goes on now
the part that was really fascinating
about this it’s for 10 minutes we’re all
watching this video all five of us and
we’re all sitting at a table set exactly
like it is in the video and this family
has got issues I mean they’re all giving
each other a hard time everybody’s
giving each other a hard time
and we all finally take off our headsets
and two things happen that were really
fascinating first we all were like god
I’m so sorry right because I was seeing
it from the mom you know my girlfriend
was seeing it from the dad everybody had
a different perspective and so we all
were traded our sort of sympathies with
each other but then we also started to
reveal other information they didn’t
know I was pregnant right I’d been in
the bathroom they didn’t know turns out
my husband was on drugs he’d got up in
the middle of the dinner and went
downstairs but we were all sitting at
the table so we didn’t see that only the
one who was the dad got to see that so
it took all of us sort of sharing the
experience afterwards in order to be
able to get the full story awesome meow
wolf oh man
okay so george RR martin author of Game
of Thrones in Santa Fe buys a bowling
alley 40,000 square foot bowling alley
guts it and gives it to a hundred
artists and what ensues is this wild
whacked-out amusement park Science
Center down the rabbit hole experience
that you just have to see I don’t know
really know what else I can show you
except for that picture the speakeasy
society right here in Los Angeles very
prolific Theatre Company in immersive
theater production they threw them I
have been an infantryman in a world war
two trench I have gone into a running op
regular restaurant with normal public
and sat down and been the audience of
one with two actors at the data dinner
table also here in Los Angeles illicium
Conservatory Theater is about to do a
tent revival that
and very badly I’ll just leave it at
that in downtown LA most recently there
was an opera that literally was
performed across limousines multiple
limousines all crossing each other and
Europe you and two friends are in the
back of a limousine and the actors are
right there in front of you absolutely
not so they drop you off at one street
corner pick you up and take you
somewhere else it was you know
unbelievable
the encounter on stage at Broadway in
Broadway right now everybody has
wireless headsets on the microphone is
on the stage and he’s whispering as he
goes around this microphone as if you
were the only person in the middle of
that stage the grand paradise
also in New York immersive theater
production this is the one that sent me
the postcard really cool and the tension
experience these are the ones that bound
my hands and dip it in wax and you know
at the time that that happened I was
like wow this is horrible I can’t
believe I signed up for this and the
further I get from the experience the
more I loved it because it was really
incredible how much it that that
immersion how much it really just rocked
me to my core the latitude society up in
Northern California a very prolific
creator in the space Jeff hull gave me
this card said show up at this one
address in the mission at 12:30 you have
a five-minute window
well I’m sorry Wow five minute window
you do not be late when there’s a
five-minute window so I show up I swipe
my car to the door I open the door it’s
really dark dark Hall I walk down the
hall and at the end of the hall I’m
looking around like what am I supposed
to do my eyes have just adjusted and I
look down and there is a wooden slide a
gorgeous wooden slide so one option
right you just go down the slide and two
hours of interactive experience later
I’m go walking around a Hackett arcade I
go into a bar to get special information
I’m walking down the road and there’s
other special things happening wild and
powerful augmented reality is something
that is just starting to crest and and
you could think of virtual reality as
kind of a subset of augmented reality
virtual reality right there’s a screen
in your face and the whole world is
rendered in front of you
augmented reality is
more about adding features to the
existing world you’re looking through a
screen and you can put some things on it
now this from kg Masuda is is a
wonderful full of video that I encourage
you all to watch the whole thing per her
augmented reality interface is just
collapsed and so it’s now rebooting as
pathos and you know it’s this is very
dystopian because you’ll see what
happens later if you watch it but but
really incredible sort of what could
happen when we all have screens in front
of our faces all the time so I’d like to
invite you all to come and visit new
Hollywood do a few there’s a lot of
explorations in this space nobody really
knows what the right answer is but
there’s a lot of interesting stuff and
for the dedicated creators among you I
urge you to build in this space it’s
awesome and there is so much capacity
for it
you know selfishly I want to be able to
do more of it but the the the I know the
the possibility for real change in this
and so what we need is a diversity of
people creating in it so that we can
have all of the perspectives represented
and be able to really start to see where
everybody else is coming from I found
this picture on the Internet
friggin love this kid I’ve no idea what
he’s doing or what he’s looking at but I
sort of feel like if we could all look
at the world through the eyes like these
the world would be a much better place
so frankly I urge you all to do some of
this stuff I love it a ton I think you
will too and imagine all the worlds we
could create thanks a lot
[Applause] you