The Horrifically Real Virtuality

The Horrifically Real Virtuality
2018
XR theatre, 60′

The illusion of the false

Considered today as precious gems, Ed Wood’s movies are full of riggings and awkward special effects that fans of the genre love to analyze: the shadow of a stage assistant passing behind a sheet of scenery, clumsy-made models, puppet-like animated elements whose strings remain visible to the image… Ed Wood’s films tell a story, but also – and unintentionally – their manufacture, where front stage and backstage seem to merge.

This process of superimposing the main subject and its staging, places the spectator in an extremely enjoyable position, on the secret-knowing side, like a true accomplice of the director.
Thus, the narrative and humorous mechanics of The Horrifically Real Virtuality were born and mainly rely on this paradox: to use the most advanced VR technologies in terms of illusion making, to reproduce the narrative clumsiness and the poor special effects of Ed Wood’s cinema.

POSTER

TRAILER

The Horrifically Real Virtuality summons the ghosts of Ed Wood Jr. (allegedly the worst movie director ever) and aging B-movie star Bela Lugosi (the first and legendary on-screen Dracula) as they reunite to shoot their final masterpiece, starring Lugosi as a character with the ability to access a parallel dimension: the Real Virtuality. In this dimension, he encounters humanoids from another time and dimension — the audience.

The experience revives Ed Wood, famous for being crowned the « worst director of all time, » two years after his death. The audience is invited to both attend the shoot and the screening of his latest film, and even « step into » the movie to embody the characters themselves. The Horrifically Real Virtuality unfolds during a movie shoot that is obviously headed towards disaster: the film is far from being completed, the production team is overwhelmed, and the actor refuses to break character. The narrative is full of references to genre cinema, with its grotesque special effects deliberately contrasting with the cutting-edge cross-reality technologies involved. Throughout the experience, mechanisms and processes are openly revealed; frontstage and backstage keep overlapping, and story and staging merge, creating a new dimension halfway between the real and the virtual: the illusion of the false.

The Horrifically Real Virtuality is a large-field experience: in groups of six, viewers explore a 70 sqm space, divided into seven different sets. The experience lasts about 45 minutes.

The Horrifically Real Virtuality takes a deeper look at immersion and metafiction mechanisms, exploring the different layers of reality.