Academic Multimedia
Receptive Cinema: A novel interactive cinema project open to collaboration
To kick off the 2011 summer guest blogger series, UK-based HCI specialist Keith Bound discusses the background of interactive film and discusses his latest research that “enables the audience presence to restructure their story world in real time, creating meaningful personalized experiences.” He is looking for collaborators so read on to learn more!
I founded Receptive Cinema™ in order to develop an innovative approach to harnessing the unexplored possibilities within the realm of interactive cinema. My first concept business idea was Emovie™ which was selected as a finalist in the Cisco i-prize Innovation Competition 2010 (3000 participants from 149 countries) to find the next billion dollar business for Cisco.
I am now seeking collaborators and investors to support my PhD research project, and in return the research outcomes and IP can be exploited commercially by the collaboration team.
Background
Cincera’s Kinoautomat (1967) was the world’s first interactive film. Its interaction consisted of stopping the film nine times so that audiences could take a vote on which scene to play next. Since then, digital technologies have enabled filmmakers, artists and designers to create novel and seamless forms of interactive film using database narrative, affective computing and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to sophisticated interactive art installations.
Shaw’s Configuring the Cave (1997) used a wooden mannequin to control real time transformations of visual and audio composition.
Meunier’s Hypnosis (1998) allowed users to interact using mouse clicks to produce a complete film.
Manovich’s Soft Cinema: Navigating the Database (2005) has been designed so it never repeats the same image, screen layout or narrative sequences.
VJ Peter Greenaway’s Tulse Luper performance (2005) creates a novel interactive cinema experience in real time on large multi-screens.
Manovich’s Soft Cinema (2005), VJ Peter Greenaway’s Tulse Luper performance (2005), Morten Schjødt’s Switching (2003), and Cloran & Doron’s Late Fragment (2007) invited the audience to change the narrative direction through mouse clicks.
Tikka’s Obsession (2006), Enactive Cinema is perhaps the most novel approach to interactive film and cinema. The process detects the audience presence which then navigates the story-world journey through different audiovisual streams representing a different perspective based on the audience’s emotion state.
My project, Receptive Cinema™ (2009), invited users to create a narrative journey by manipulating multiple video streams running simultaneously in real time.
Shaw’s Scenario (2011) is the first 360-degree 3D interactive cinematic installation using artificial intelligence.
Research Project
Inspired by Enactive Cinema, the aim of my investigation is to explore audience emotional responses to film and multi-sensory interactive cinematic experiences and create a process that enables the audience presence to restructure their story world in real time creating meaningful personalized experiences.
Led by relevant research in cognitive/neuroscience, affective computing, intuitive multimodal HCI, interaction technologies and filmmaking techniques, a multi-disciplinary team will be created to develop a multi-sensory interactive cinematic installation experience where the audience interacts though three key senses: visual, auditory and kinaesthetic.
The user interaction sensing will allow profiling derived from emotion and gesture recognition to articulate the user’s relation to narrative scenarios: effectively personalizing their engagement, based on their personality and emotional reactions. This means engagement with the story-space or game world will be nuanced in terms of character reactions and mis-en-scene through real-time changes in scene and character reactions using generative, procedural and AI techniques, based on user affective responses and ontology-driven profiling.
The proposed supporting technologies include interaction technologies such as touch, gestures, gaze, physiological data, speech, sound and motion.
Collaboration and Investment Benefits
A pioneering research project that will deliver innovative alternative digital content for the high growth digital cinema market and novel applications for the home digital entertainment market, through a single platform (cloud computing).
- Audience presence drives the story-world restructuring and narrative direction
- Transcends cinema or gaming experience through multi-sensory interaction and multi-platforms e.g. TV, Cinema, PC, Mobile
- New form of pervasive entertainment
- Creation of meaningful personalised content and experiences
- Located on a server (cloud computing) to eliminate duplication, downloading content and film piracy
- New cinematic experience for Hollywood style blockbuster film promotional events in Cinema lobby Areas (Installation)
- Novel format for independent film makers
- Global licensing opportunities
I am seeking innovative SME’s and investors to collaborate in the research and commercial development of this novel approach to interactive film and cinema.
For more information or an informal discussion please email me at: receptivecinema@virginmedia.com
Keith Bound is an award winning international designer and innovator. During the last five years he has developed cutting-edge research in multimedia methodologies which reduce cognitive load, improve communication and learning. His work includes a study based on theoretical and practice-led research, investigating complex issues in biofeedback human-computer interaction design, psychological and physiological responses to interactive cinema, film and narrative.
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