Nested Cinema co-creation: advancing female inclusion in immersive experience innovation and storytelling
This presentation focuses on the latest stage of the long-term practice-as-research project entitled Nested Cinema, which establishes co-creative practice with female film and media students at the University of Salford. This stage of the research addresses the under-representation of female creatives in technical careers and educational pathways by exploring female engagement and mindsets within creative technical environments, allowing the participants to realise their creative vision, leadership potential and collaborative skills. Applying approaches such as co-creation of a learning community with the inclusion of identity and noticing (Hod, Dvir, Tueg, 2023), and considering further ideas on how to challenge fixed mindsets (Dweck, 2008; Nottingham & Larsson, 2019), this stage of the project aims to build confidence and technological engagement in aspiring female professionals through creative experiences within the cutting-edge PaR and technological context of Nested Cinema.
Nested Cinema combines spatial, virtual and screen modes of content presentation, orchestrating media and IoT technologies through an innovative mode of experience called nesting. Nesting embeds and integrates spatial, virtual, screen and sonic layers of viewer experience for an enhanced sense of immersion while staying true to the aesthetic, dramatic and storytelling powers of cinema. In this way, Nested Cinema lessens the boundaries between the physical and the virtual, between the real and the imaginary, while contributing to an existing research context within expanded cinema (Balsom, 2013), immersive experiences (Ng, 2021), cinematic VR (Szita et.al., 2018) but also theoretical contexts on spatiality (Knight-Hill, 2020), embodiment (Sobchack, 1992) and emergent narrative (Walsh, 2011).
In this presentation, we explain, contextualise and demonstrate the Nested Cinema concept, using extensive audio-visual documentation that includes a 360 VR experience demonstration. Subsequently, we elaborate on the educational co-creative approaches to working with female creatives in a workshop setting, sharing audio-visual and VR examples of the new work they have created for the Nested Cinema platform, while giving insight into their personal and professional growth.
Your lecturers: Jayne Sayer & Pavel Prokopic
Jayne Sayer is a lecturer in Film Production at the University of Salford, and an Art Department specialist with a particular focus on the integration of digital processes into film design and aesthetics. Drawing from over 10 years of corporate and broadcast industry experience, Jayne’s current practice is centered on how audience experiences in immersive theatre and art installations can be translated into the cinematic form, specifically within the fields of Production Design and Expanded Cinema, alongside developing new smart technology and Virtual Production solutions. Most recently, Jayne has been a co-investigator on the Nested Cinema research, also contributing as a production designer and flexible technologist to the practical realisation of the project. Jayne currently acts as an advisor on a research project developing responsive costume lighting and projection techniques for live music performance, funded by the Arts Council England.
Pavel Prokopic is a filmmaker, and a lecturer in Film Production at the University of Salford. His current research focuses on advancing cinema as a unique form of art and storytelling by synthesising creative practice-as-research, philosophical concepts, and an innovative application of traditional methods and cutting-edge information and communication technologies. As an independent filmmaker, Pavel has written and directed several dramas and experimental projects, and worked as a freelance cinematographer in London. He also worked as a content director/producer on an loT research project The Living Room of the Future with BBC R&D and the British Council. His work has been widely published, exhibited and presented, including FACT in Liverpool, Grosvenor Gallery in Manchester and Victoria & Albert Museum in London.
He holds a PhD in Film from the AHRC North West Consortium/University
of Salford, and a Master's degree in Film Aesthetics from Magdalen College, University of Oxford.
Session hosted by Jan Adamczyk
