Sundowning
Shivani Hassard - UK
Angela McArthur - UK
Vanessa Pope - UK/CH
Shivani Hassard - UK
Angela McArthur - UK
Vanessa Pope - UK/CH

You have found yourself in the middle of a play but you can’t remember your lines and you’re not even sure of your character.
Borne out of a family member's diagnosis and decline, Sundowning is a virtual reality film that explores the experience of having Alzheimer’s from a first-person perspective. The experience combines an embodied 360° video with theatre and an interactive, higher order ambisonic soundscape [1], giving the viewer a new understanding of this strange and isolating disease.
A major influence on the piece was the experience of a Virtual Dementia tour [2] [3], conducted while researching Alzheimer's in order to better understand what a family member was going through. This raised the question: whose point of view was embodied by the camera in a 360 video?
Borne out of a family member's diagnosis and decline, Sundowning is a virtual reality film that explores the experience of having Alzheimer’s from a first-person perspective. The experience combines an embodied 360° video with theatre and an interactive, higher order ambisonic soundscape [1], giving the viewer a new understanding of this strange and isolating disease.
A major influence on the piece was the experience of a Virtual Dementia tour [2] [3], conducted while researching Alzheimer's in order to better understand what a family member was going through. This raised the question: whose point of view was embodied by the camera in a 360 video?
[1] MCARTHUR, STEWART & SANDLER (2017). Sounds too good to be true: diegetic infidelity - the case for sound in virtual reality ︎︎︎
[2] ALZHEIMERS RESEARCH UK. A Walk Through Dementia ︎︎︎
[3] BEVILLE (2002). Virtual Dementia Tour helps sensitive health care providers ︎︎︎
[4] IMX 2020. Snap Creative Challenge: Reimagine the Future of Storytelling with Augmented Reality ︎︎︎
[5] POPE ET AL. (2017) The Geometry of Storytelling: Theatrical Use of Space for 360-Degree Videos and Virtual Reality ︎︎︎
[2] ALZHEIMERS RESEARCH UK. A Walk Through Dementia ︎︎︎
[3] BEVILLE (2002). Virtual Dementia Tour helps sensitive health care providers ︎︎︎
[4] IMX 2020. Snap Creative Challenge: Reimagine the Future of Storytelling with Augmented Reality ︎︎︎
[5] POPE ET AL. (2017) The Geometry of Storytelling: Theatrical Use of Space for 360-Degree Videos and Virtual Reality ︎︎︎
Sundowning
Shivani Hassard - UK
Angela McArthur - UK
Vanessa Pope - UK/CH
Shivani Hassard - UK
Angela McArthur - UK
Vanessa Pope - UK/CH
Shivani Hassard - UK
Shivani Hassard directs, shoots and edits time-based and interactive media projects. She is also a PhD candidate researching the sense of embodiment in VR. Her projects include narrative film, documentary and immersive VR experiences, and she has shown work at the London Film Festival, BFI Flare, Dazed Digital and on gal-dem.com.
a.s.hassard@qmul.ac.uk
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Angela McArthur - UK
Angela McArthur is currently artist in residence within ARTEC at NTNU, Norway. In 2019 she was in residence at the Institut für Elektronische Musik (IEM) in Graz, working with the IKO loudspeaker. She is a practitioner, lecturer and PhD candidate, researching the aesthetics of distance in spatial sound. She's worked in studio, live and location environments. She draws from eco-feminist discourse and non-human onto-epistemologies.
a.mcarthur@qmul.ac.uk
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Vanessa Pope - UK/CH
Vanessa Pope designs immersive storytelling for recorded media and live performance. She also researches how performers deliver material to live audiences so their responsive systems can be used in new technologies. Vanessa was on the program committee for The Future of Storytelling with Augmented Reality creative challenge led by Snap Inc. for IMX 2020 [4] and collaborated with BBC R&D to investigate actor movement for 360-videos [5].
v.c.pope@qmul.ac.uk
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