A meeting with Alessandro Redaelli, gamer and director
In our Daily’s earlier editions, we welcomed the voices of scholars to better understand what exactly Venice Immersive XR’s experiences are. Simone Arcagni, Lev Manovich, Bruno Di Marino are experts in aesthetics, visual arts, and digital technologies. We cannot seem to be there, though, not yet. To understand what immersive narrative digital arts are and where they are going, we need to start with a different form of culture, specifically, the sub-culture of gaming.
In today’s Italy, there’s no better expert gamer and promising filmmaker than Alessandro Redaelli, thanks to his critical thinking and clear vision on immersive digital technology applied to interactive storytelling, whether played or not. Let’s look for enlightenment.
That’s quite right: virtual reality necessarily grows on gaming. The reason is simple: if a simple 360-degree or 180-degree story, the grammar of filmmaking is paradoxically limited, the real value added in a VR context is that of interaction. It follows that interaction is something proper of the video-gaming world, which should probably find some new labeling to appear to the intellectual elites as the form of art, entertainment, and communication it actually is.
Where should we look to find beauty in what we are about to see at Venice Immersive? Authentic beauty, specifical, immersive, digital beauty.
There are no rules, here. My piece of advice as you explore Venice Immersive is to let yourself be drawn into the world as you read its presentation, and to try whatever you can get your hands on. Something will strike a chord, something will not, but surely this is an experience that won’t leave you indifferent. As far as what to look for within a given VR project, that’s the job of the maker of that specific project.
In Venice, are we exploring new expressive practices in VR and XR to discover new aesthetic paradigms?
It makes sense to keep looking and to keep observing the evolution of VR and XR grammar, especially considering artists who feel the need to exploit this specific techniques to tell their stories. Again, valuable video games, films, and VR experiences are produced and released still, which is what, in the end, keeps the market afloat. In this sense, Venice Immservie is surely a world-class cornerstone in the Virtual Reality industry. We can only enjoy these experiences here in Venice, nowhere else.
In your opinion, what does a good VR work need to have to win over a dwindling market and impose a truly original vision, something that might even push the boundaries of cinema?
First, it must show that Virtual Reality is the best language to tell that specific story. Second, it must allow me to interact with the space, it must guide me in some intelligent way and believe in the idea that the space of the creation is shared with my physical presence. As an example, Songs for a Passerby, shown in Venice last year, integrates the motion of the body with mapping sensors in the room–this is something that is really unique and cannot be replicated using any other media.
Venice is the most important show of XR projects. I feel, though, that at least until last year, these projects are merely turning about themselves. They all play with the presence of the user, highlight the subject’s point of view, flirt with identity and the role of the onlooker, and fail to launch narrative-wise. Is this an intrinsic limit or is it lack of courage?
A bit of both. The media’s grammar is being born as we speak, and it’s natural for many, especially those who come from different kinds of media, to have a hard time finding their voice in this world. In Venice, I saw very good pieces, and some others that weren’t quite as good, some shallow, some totally wrong given the context of Virtual Reality. The beauty of the epoch we live in is that we are able to see its very birth, like others before us did as cinema came into being in the early twentieth century.
I keep looking forward to brave new projects, independent ones, that dare push the boundaries of the media and finally show us new horizons. Am I dreaming? Am I wearing a VR visor?
I believe that will come in due time, but I am also starting to doubt we will get there soon. With commercial Virtual Reality barely making it, artistic VR might slow down, too. Never say never.
In your latest video, you eulogized VR. Why?
Because so far, unfortunately, VR failed. Not in output, mind you, because there is plenty of perfectly usable VR products out there, and they are capable of building their own grammar. What failed is the chiefly commercial function. Few visors were sold, and investments get halved every year, at least as far as VR gaming goes. Even Meta, maybe the most important player in the mass adoption of Virtual Reality, is slowly divesting its most ambitious programme, probably waiting for better market conditions. What valuable VR projects we had until four, five years ago, are but a memory today. There are good title s coming out, sure, but they are more and more independent and more rare, too.
VR Italia is a dead-end project?
VR Italia changed. The website is online and Michael and I occasionally update it. It’s there, with news and hundreds of articles written over years of work. Given where Virtual Reality is going, we decided to re-bran all our channels. We call it GameCvlt now, because we feel the need to speak to everyone in the world of gaming, not to a specific sub-genre. This way, we will be able to analyze and discuss in detail everything we value in any specific context.
