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Celebrating Three Days of Virtual Reality Exploration at MUTEK_IMG

We asked founder and director of MUTEK, Alain Mongeau, about the ever growing interest for VR.
All images courtesy of Trung Dung Nguyen

Once again, Montreal underlines its widely-recognized standing as a hotbed for cutting-edge creativity and tech-focused communities. Last weekend, the Old Montreal-located Phi center was taken over by the second edition of MUTEK_IMG, a three-day-long forum that took the annual five-day Spring celebration that is MUTEK and implemented its results. Emphasizing reflection and the sharing of ideas, this gathering brought together local and international figures across industries—including artists, creators, engineers, technologists—and offered a well-oiled program filled with activities and themes exploring the future of creativity.

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Quebec-based digital strategies for fusing the digital arts scene with tech industry, new challenges and approaches to digital and interactive arts within cities, hacktivism, surveillance, and even biopolitics were discussed and tackled critically through workshops, presentations, and panels, with an extended portion focused on virtual reality. All these activities offered new ideas and perspectives that strengthen the triangular relationship between creators, industries, and, obviously, the public.

The VR-dedicated segments delighted the audience by questioning and exploring not only virtual creativity and economic issues, but also its promise for everyday existence. Thanks to a smart assemblage of exclusive interactive and/or cinematographic creations, the Kaleidoscope VR Film Festival showcase, and a whole day of panels and discussions, attendees deeply explored what is widely-considered the next platform for innovative and experiential technology.

We made it to the event and enjoyed it, so to learn more about the ideas behind the event—and particularly about the VR portions—The Creators Project asked Alain Mongeau, founder and director of MUTEK, a few questions.

The Creators Project: What were your expectations before this second edition of MUTEK_IMG, and did this event meet them?

Alain Mongeau: When we started MUTEK_IMG a couple of years ago, our intention was to create a platform which would allow us to bring together the many and varied creative forces of Montreal’s digital milieu. In both industry and arts here, a lot of people are actively positioning Montreal as a digital hub, but many work in silos. So the goal was to foster exchange and encourage a cross pollination of ideas, and to break down the barriers that exist between independent artistic practices and creative industries.

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I think this second edition of MUTEK_IMG really hit the mark and captured this spirit. We managed to cover many topics related to digital visual creation, everything was well attended, and it spurred a lot of new encounters and discussions. I feel a forum like MUTEK_IMG fulfills a definite need in this city.

Why did you chose VR as primary topic?

In a way, VR imposed itself. For the last year or so we were sensing that VR was making a comeback and becoming a major force in so many areas: gaming, film, live action and documentary, abstract creative work, in social space, and we started to pay attention.

Then, we connected to Frederic Guarino of MediaBiz International, who’s totally passionate about the potential of VR and is very knowledgeable about what's happening on the ground, both in Montreal and internationally—for instance, he’s the one who put us in touch with the Kaleidsocope VR Film Festival. So from there we started to build a program related more specifically to VR, and very quickly it took on interesting dimensions. In the end it would’ve been easy to dedicate the full three days of MUTEK_IMG to VR alone!

According to you, what does the future look like for VR technologies?

I was surprised to see the level of enthusiasm that the VR people seem to all share in their practice. You could sense that there’s a lot of excitement about the possibilities for this new medium, not just technically, visually, and spatially but as concerns narrative, affect, and human interaction. The conference section of MUTEK_IMG’s VR SALON was split into three tracks—the Creative track, the Technology track and the Industry track—each of them triggering its own set of challenges, and mobilizing a lot of effort in research and development.

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The excitement was quite contagious. Personally, what I find attractive in VR is how it combines lot of different knowledge to converge towards one platform, bringing together visionary research, innovative technologists, multimedia artistic creators, and adventurous production and distribution companies.

Don’t you think that the development of virtual reality could harm collective experiences in cities like Montreal, where mapping, VJing, and other activities that occupy physical spaces hold strong public interest?

Everyone seems to agree that the current image of VR as individuals wearing personal goggles and being immersed in a private world is a transitionary mode for the technology, and that very quickly we’ll see the whole thing evolve towards a more open and collective type of experience.

As such I see VR more as a new medium and new form of immersion. Its future may intersect with other practices but it brings new perspectives, angles, sensations and novel narrative and emotional language to the table.

MUTEK_IMG was presented in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut Montreal and the Phi Center with the participation and collaboration of Eastern Bloc, Quartier des spectacles, and NFB.

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