FOUNDER

Barbara Lippe PhD is a unique combination of video-game-art-director-turned actor. Having designed characters for games companies in Tokyo including Nintendo, Sega, Sony and Namco Bandai and creating art for social games years before the rise of the genre and researching what works for a female target audience she has reached a turning point: it's not enough to DRAW characters, one must BECOME characters. To that end, she has recently graduated from a renowned London acting school. With that new toolkit onboard she's moving on from designing virtual worlds to creating drama-enriched content for the virtual reality. Bridging the two worlds, she marries the lessons learned on stage & screen with her knowledge of video games and innovates the principles of character development, status and staging for VR.

GLOBAL TEAM

Lev Ledit has 15+ yrs game design experience incl Rockstar Games and is the inventor of the award-winning virtual world Papermint (awarded the Digital World Heritage), since 2011 focus on game concepts for social change. Creator of the unique “Game-Theatre” turning the whole Freiburg city theatre into an immersive social game for 24h. Lecturer of game design at several universities with 300+ game projects released. Currently developing the ambitious walkable VR experience “Escape” with Gamegestalt. Lev studied mechatronics, multi-media-arts and produced a feature film.

Quba Michalski is an Art Director, Motion Artist, Filmmaker, Problem Solver, Writer, Strategist, Tinkerer and Educator who worked at Autofuss/Bot&Dolly studios and Google’s VR/Cardboard/Jump team where he could use his storytelling, film-making, design and communication skills with some of the world’s most cutting-edge tech (motion control, drones, 360 cameras, VR rigs).

Risa Cohen is a transmedia producer crossing the boarders of film and game. She has worked with Atari, Disney, Square-Enix, Namco, NEC, Universal studios, Warner Bros and ABC television and has recently finished a $2Mio VR production exploring spherical storytelling in Spain.

Christian Candid has switched a university degree for a position as record label boss. As pioneer of electronic music production, owner of the renowned label and publishing company Klein Records he worked with global names in urban music since the 90s, ran Vienna's first electro music club night, partnered with Universal Music, synced his productions for AAA video games (Midnight Club Los Angeles), the booting theme of the Apple Mac OSX, as well as commercials (Kia, Magnum, Sony) and TV series (Better Call Saul). Christian is working in music productions for VR since 2015.

Daan Colijn is a visual story teller and theme park nerd developing concepts for immersive theater and interactive art installations. He loves to implement a high level of user experience and multiple layers of fiction over the existing world. He's working with and without sets and props, integrating his understanding of video games and VR.

Andrea Barone born in Florence breathed art through his father, an informal expressionist painter. During his studies at the famous Bologna arts university and the New York Film academy he started directing for trend-setting, award-winning visual artists collective theSPONKstudios polishing his craft by creating experimental short films, documentaries and concept videos for art galleries. FRom his new base London he is travelling the world directing fashion films and commercials around Europe, USA and Asia with Blue Blooded. Andrea directed up and coming British actors such as Tom Hiddleston and Holliday Grainger, worked with Fashion photography icons like Ellen von Unwerth and Emma Summerton and got the prestigious Vimeo Staff Pick with POLAROIDREAM© in 2016.

Petra Freimund MA is a passionate theatre & film director who graduated from the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama (London), one of the finest addresses for advanced theatre practice in the world. She decided NOT to accept one of the extremely rare places offered to her at the renowned London Film School but went out into the international limelight by staging and directing innovative plays employing forefront techniques like body mapping and live visual interaction. She has worked with Oscar winner Virgil Widrich and Simon Stephens (The Royal Court Theatre) and is guaranteed to entice you with her rich background in serial storytelling for TV, immersive theatre, script writing, dramaturgy, film editing, political campaigning, multimedia and even medicine. Nobody could direct you better.

Reinhold Bidner lives film, visuals and animation since the early 2000s and has specialised in motion graphics and stereoscopic 3D. He studied applied sciences and technologies at FH Salzburg (MultiMediaArt), at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee (Animation and Electronic Media), completed his degree with merit within the scope of a Socrates Scholarship at K.O.P.P.-Film Berlin and worked as art resident in Paris, Prague and Rome. As member of the hybrid media artist-collectives gold extra and 1n0ut he is always at the forefront of innovative cultural applications using the latest technology. He was key researcher for time-based media for the future lab at the Ars Electronica and has produced augmented reality projects and interactive movies. His creations were awarded at the Vienna Independent Short Festival and the Golden Kuker International Animation Film Festival, his videos are used for the renowned literary "Bachmann Preis" and shown at the Soundframe Festival. He is teaching media technology at several European universities.

Fresh FX is a VFX production house of the highest standard producing interactive and linear content for global clients such as Red Bull and Volkswagen. They have beein building a dedicated VR team for three years and experiment with the latest multiuser technology and volumetric video to create stunning VR experiences.

MIXED REALITY IN PAPERMINT

VR VS. IMMERSIVE THEATRE

In immersive theatre the audience is placed within the environment of the story. Hence this art form is quite similar to a sophisticated VR drama experience: both share the challenges of multiviewer/player, multiperspective and interactivity within a staged narrative.

In immersive theatre the audience plays a role - whether as a witness or as an actual character. They may be allowed to roam and explore the performance space as the performance happens around them, allowing them to decide what they see and what they skip - turning them into editors in that way.

However, in order to follow key scenes the audience must be guided or herded. They might even become part of the performance. Thus the lines between performer & audience and performance & life are blurred. To achieve this in a seamless way immersive theatre directors work with a range of techniques applicable to VR.

Anxiety among the audience is one of the main challenges caused by this lack of separation between fiction & reality in immersive experiences, be it theatre or VR. If an audience member is not expecting to become part of the performance or is uncomfortable with that idea, it can be very off-putting. Knowing that one can still back away from it all is essential too.

So there must be some form of consent: whether that’s the conscious decision to take an actor’s outstretched hand or to take off the VR headset.