Month: May 2023

Wanda

The night before the dramatic events, the girls sat around the bonfire discussing the legend of “Wanda who did not want a German”. They boarded two boats, each overloaded. Allegedly, local fishermen had been warning them. They wanted to see the sea very much, though. Witness accounts remain fragmented and inconsistent. The order of events can only be recreated roughly. Using the historical narrative, we reshape its plot. We follow 5 girls from the moment of departure from their homes until the moment of tragedy. The essay pictures the days preceding the trip: girls elect their own Wanda (the scout team is named after the legendary virgin). The chosen one is to become the leader for that day – she holds the power. Yet, at night, we learn the dark side of it: taking up the role of Wanda means being slandered and drowned. We explore the girls’ relation with two worlds: internal (relations among themselves) and the outside world. We look at the sphere of submission: scout uniforms vs. colorful dresses, slips and loose hair – slipping out of the masculine world order: militarisation, discipline, hierarchy, and war. Negligence on the side of adults or unconscious suicidal desires? The story unfolds on the edge between dreams and reality, historical facts and legends about Wanda as a figure of overcoming the triad: death-life-death. The girls’ world is tormented by mystery. Each of them is, in their own way, a “Wanda” who was forced to take her own life or was made, by some other forces, to withdraw from life – from libidinal reality – elan vital, one’s own sexuality. It is Wanda who is the mirror of their impression of femininity. The action of the movie has two timelines: 1948 and today. The girls’ age and looks do not change. The change of time, but not of the space, serves to show how important and unceasingly relevant for women are the issues at stake.

Anna Baumgart – She is one of the most acclaimed Polish contemporary multimedia artist involved in directing, sculpture, installation, performance, video, photography and artistic tattooing. Her work is categorised as critical art and feminist art. She explores themes related to cultural patterns of behaviour, social stereotypes and the problems of contemporary women. She moves fluidly between essay, documentary, reportage and music video conventions. Baumgart’s works can be found in collections, musea, and art galleries all around the world.

Non duality

“Non duality” referring to the educational film genre, in rhythmic and associative montages of meaning, tackles the theme of the belief in the separateness of the Self that lies at the foundation of Western culture and the divisive naturalizing function of language itself. The film juxtaposes archival footage from the Educational Film Studio in ?ód? and a documentary and personal record of a conversation with Halina Pytlasinska, a British psychologist and therapist who works with the collective unconscious using the social dreaming matrix method.

Tomasz W?gorzewski – theatre director and writer. A graduate of Ethnography and Cultural Anthropology at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow and Directing at the School of Theatre in Krakow. Grantee of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage Scholarship in 2020 and 2016. Focused on issues related to the themes of memory and nostalgia, as well as the history of the Polish esoteric movement in the interwar period. In his current theatre work, he develops his interests in the spirituality of contemporary society and the history of psychology and psychoanalysis.

IO4 – publications

The results of the work carried out as a part of the project “Immersive experiences and technologies – from creative practice to educational theory” are published in two monographic issues of Media Management Review:

Volume 10, Number 4, 2022

Full table of contents with articles available HERE.

Volume 11, Number 1, 2023

Full table of contents with articles available HERE.

Preface: Managing immersive media 

eXtended Reality (XR) is an umbrella term covering immersive technologies like virtual reality (VR), mixed reality (MR) and augmented reality (AR). eXtended realities called also virtual worlds or new virtual environments are challenging as they imply a new, different from the traditional, way of interactive creation and perception or consumption by an individual. The user becomes not just a recipient, but the prosumer of his/her own user experience (virtual, real, hybrid). This change goes along with the Culture 3.0 concept and emphasises the co-creation process of art and culture. However, as the “immersive” prosumer can consume, create and vice versa creating consume individually the content (in fact, in the format of an experiment); this liquid relation argues the established business models and the existing legal, ethical, and political implications of their use.

eXtended reality unlocks new opportunities for various industries. These technologies play an important role in enabling the new digital education, workplace and entertainment. Not only does XR stimulate audiovisual experience in a physical space, but also it brings the sense of touch into the virtual space.

Introducing virtual technologies that connect physical and digital realms raises questions over what impact eXtended reality would have on the world around us and how XR would change the future. Therefore it is of high importance to explore the nature of prospective immersive technologies covering the practical XR application process and the creative use of virtual environments as novel forms of media, affording human-computer communication and digitally mediated social interaction.

This special English-language issue of “Media Management Review” deals with theoretical and practical issues related to immersive technologies and their present and future educational, entertainment and corporate applications. Scholars and practitioners explore the problems of media convergence, immersive multimedia, XR content production and XR education and they contribute to this volume.

“XR workflows in film production: demonstration for educational purposes”, authored by Filip Gabriel Pud?o, Ma?gorzata Kotli?ska, Wojciech Olchowski, Katarzyna Kope? and Marta Materska-Samek       describe how the use of the XR production technologies influenced the film production process. They explore the differences between diverse XR production workflows showing criteria for workflow paths of traditional approach to film production and XR production flow, including workflow structure, skills, education, and equipment.

Magdalena Soboci?ska and Katarzyna Kope? explore the potential and determinants for the virtual reality usage in education at the higher education level. They focus also on generational changes determining the VR usage in tertiary education. Then the features of virtual reality and related terms are explained to make a basis for discussing VR as a learning aid of the 21st century.

Technological, social and legal aspects of the metaverse are reviewed by Malwina Popio?ek, Barbara Cyrek, Maciej Giermak and Marzena Bara?ska. The authors have reviewed selected issues related to the metaverse concept, taking into account selected social, technological, and legal aspects. This qualitative content analysis of the literature revealed the most promising and most threatening aspects of metaverse development and dissemination within the scope of technology, social sciences, and law.

Dimitris Delinikolas, Monika Hapek and Micha? Wójciak in the article “The spectrum of XR marketing—collective case study” discussed XR in marketing in the context of phygital category. Five examples from 2016–2022 have been selected to respond on the impact of XR on marketing, the similarities and differences between the XR marketing projects, the importance of XR in the context of phygital and the value of the combination of physical and digital elements in helping the audience to get accustomed to immersive media.

 

As the topic of new virtual environments (Ves) becomes an enormous field of research, the reader can find XR related papers also in the next issue of “Media Management Review” (1-2023).

Caterina Antonopoulou, Natalia Arsenopoulou, Fabrizio Calì, Penny Papageorgopoulou,  and Charalampos Rizopoulos highlight various aspects of the design, development, and evaluation processes of immersive XR experiences. Medium-related challenges are discussed in relation to the design and implementation of user interaction, 3D content creation, 3D composition and social engagement in VEs.

How a digital film scouting for Virtual Production (VP) affects the process of creating diverse audiovisual works is the question raise by Marta Materska-Samek, Ma?gorzata Kotli?ska, Katarzyna Kope?, Filip Gabriel Pud?o and Wojciech Olchowski. Authors discuss, what criteria should be taken into account when choosing a location, what techniques can be used to make the best use of its potential, and how film locations fit into the broader context of the film.

Adnan Hadziselimovicand  Krzysztof Pijarski in “Freedom of Expression in Privacy vs. Public Interest, a case for Open Justice in Extended Reality” continue the discussion on advanced jurisprudence, outlined in Algorithms, Ethics and Justice (Hadzi, 2022), where restorative justice was proposed for the mitigation of artificial intelligence (AI) crimes.

All these papers were developed within the framework of the Erasmus XR project „Experience and immersive technologies – from creative practice to educational theory” in partnership with Jagiellonian University, Lodz Film School, University of Malta and University of Athens (project ID number: 2020-1-PL01-KA226-HE-095891).

 

Marta Materska-Samek, PhD