Synthesizing technical trends and narratives for inclusive lens definitions.
Before we proceed, let's consider some examples: I assert that recent trends in live show designs anticipated the lens concept without explicitly using the term and its implications. By becoming aware of this and embedding this new notion, we can enhance our understanding of each project's vision, leading to better immersions and improved processes, tools, and collaborations.
While sorting through the studio archive recently, I found many show setups from the past decade. Often, these included a few screens, projection props, and lights, but also more accurately scanned architecture and seating plots. Over time, the stage's aperture has expanded creatively. This is particularly obvious in theatres, where the area covered by projectors and ambient light control has led to content spilling onto adjacent walls. What began with augmenting smaller structures has evolved into custom prosceniums, dissolving the stage edge (How to Train Your Dragon), and fully taking over the architecture itself (Radio City Music Hall, Al Wasl Dome - Expo2020).
This trend continues with tailored displays seamlessly integrated into custom-built theatres, surrounding the audience and breaking the fourth wall with action close at hand or directly above the guests. Props and architecture are becoming seamless extensions of the story, merging reality and fiction (Tempest, FFL).
Abba Voyage in London exemplifies this trend, dictating stage and content design while overcoming clichés of real and virtual (see part 1: legacy feeling), perfectly blending rendered and actual lights, audience, actors and avatars. Continuing this notion, much like iMax to cinema, the canvas space is breaking free from the curtain to fill the periphery.
Keynotes (Open Saudi) and brand experiences (L460) also immerse visitors, making them part of the action. Unlike theatres, these spaces often allow people to roam freely and gather at the best viewing spots seemingly at their own will. This is particularly true for showrooms and themed entertainment that guide visitor flow (30Rock Observation Hall, View Boston).
While all these spaces typically feature less encompassing displays, the viewer's attention is directed along a path, not just through time. Consequently, the quality of immersion can vary with the rate of travel. At pause points, the view, immersion, and entertainment expand, typically becoming more ambient and abstract in transitional spaces.
Analogous to the stereoscopic virtuality of headsets, projection-mapping, emissive displays and lighting can augment a physical substrate - props, models, actors and more tangible objects - adding dimensionality and allowing greater freedom of movement for viewers. This can turn canvas-spaces into unified fields of light, something lighting designer Manny Treeson calls “luminous scenery”, i.e. a much more expanded and immersive 'canvas' for conveying story and information. Where the dimensional luminous scenery meets social engineering, interior design, sound, and practical effect, the space inevitably evolves into a lens.
In part one I already argued, a lens environment is dictated and completed by a narrative. This narrative can range in meaning from an abstract theme, to a timeline, story, and documentary - it does not imply that lenses are purely fictional. The narrative is the main motive and justification, which can also be based on facts.
On one end of the spectrum, showrooms, exhibitions, and walk-through entertainment illustrate this concept, while on the other end there are large-scale curated environments like theme parks (Main Street and the Castle at Disney, Hogwarts, and Super Nintendo World at Universal) as well as entertainment for audiences in captive spaces such as airports (Portland International Airport); all of which are microcosms that define their own substrate.
Inside these spaces, fact and fiction merge according to their motive, above and beyond real and virtual. Consider the range from aquariums for instance, to ‘reality thills’ with analogue methods such as lighting and practical effects (Alien War 1992-96, escape rooms), to digitally enriched experiences with complex projections, spatial sound, practical effects, and custom displays (Johnnie Walker Prince Street); all offering robust glasses-free shared experiences. Nonetheless most experiential venues are interior spaces with capacities for a few dozen people, which i would define as groups, distinct from hundreds or thousands forming crowds. These spaces allow very personal interactions among participants, ranging from holding hands to spectators and actors becoming interchangeable (Punchdrunk, Secret Cinema). The social dynamic can shift both spontaneously and intentionally, altering the space's purpose.
While not fully rendered and largely determined by canvas technologies, these spaces are accomplished by successfully superimposing narratives onto real world props and are therefore intrinsically limited in size. This is why I would like to call them group-lenses. Groups in contrast to crowds also have different faculties of reason and emotion, which need to be reflected in the environment design and plot.
Group-lenses can be planned, commissioned, and managed with reasonable effort, existing within regular architecture. This benefits location and accessibility, ultimately pointing to the interface between fictional and factual spaces. Similar to stepping through a wardrobe, they connect fiction to the physical world through ordinary doorways, bridges and other conduits - a trait shared with concept stores. Therefore, these spaces are often found in cities, on high streets (Louis Vuitton-Exhibition Series, Outernet - London), and recently in airports and malls.
They typically provide a transitional landing and decompression zone for visitors, offering a seemingly normal space from where the augmentation intensifies. This smooths the transition between the ordinary and narrative, unlike putting on headsets or travelling to a special crowd event location, both loaded with expectations, which can be useful in its own right. The group-lens conveys fictions more seamlessly without breaking visitors' preconceptions.
... it turns out humans are drawn to proximity. We want to come together in a specific place in real time to share and experience “... and while the show's “environments were artificial they were also shared by all of us experiencing it together in real life. … It was the physical proximity here that produced something so profound and so affecting.
This philosophy highlights the importance of communal encounters in fostering lasting memories and emotional bonds, which are important to our humanity and at the same time valuable for brands, institutions, and media competing for audiences' attention.
While headsets - personal devices like phones or glasses - excel in interactivity, extent of world knowledge, and virtual community creation, they can exclude those without access to the necessary devices or bandwidth. Sphere shows, on the other hand, limit freedom of movement and audience interaction to the level of emotional affirmation, but therefore provide deeply connecting experiences proportional to the number of visitors. Studies suggest this effect to be truly visceral and once an audience is large enough it forms a crowd, which has persuasive effects, since “The images evoked in their (the crowds) mind by a personage, an event, an accident, are almost as lifelike as the reality.” …and… “Whether the feelings exhibited by a crowd be good or bad, they present the double character of being very simple and very exaggerated. ” Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd; study of the popular mind, Chapter III-33 + II-3. While Le Bon is most concerned with the primal and unreflected states of the crowd, I would like to emphasise their potential for amplified (positive) emotion - euphoria - in the context of this examination.
The deep emotions felt among crowds might be why games like Fortnite have begun to mimic live show formats. Similarly, live entertainment now often patches virtual content (aR) into the stage space. What is convincing to remote audiences breaks the magic of immersion for visitors at the events, who need to gaze at such hybrids on image magnification (imag) screens or phones.
To be meaningful, the challenge for live entertainment lies in designing spaces that combine interactivity, free movement, and communal affection, while maintaining a single unified viewing experience.
And he continues:
Lenses, beyond the narrow definition of headsets and spheres, take shape by blending the real and virtual, substrate and narrative, and ideally remain nested within ordinary communal spaces to lower the conceptual entry threshold.
Next, let's review and imagine tools that help to solve specific challenges posed by group-lenses.
I only have one goal which is to bring people together; to share some joy and to share some magic and to make genuine emotional connection between the audience with the performers and with each other …
Willie Williams, Ted, April 2024
Headsets and the Sphere engulf us in fully-rendered sophisticated worlds, acting as the primary light sources within their respective visual bubbles, in which display and content become equivalents. Both offer similar capabilities in reproductive fidelity. Headsets render stereoscopically, while large domes still provide a convincing experience since their audience is placed beyond the threshold of depth distinction (schematic), and anchored by a real stage at the focal point.
Nevertheless, both immersions can break if there are visual obstructions. What is too much haze or stage light in a Sphere? Is there a fleck or smudge on the headset optics? Therefore, contact lenses may represent the ultimate form factor for the latter. The term "lens" feels apt generally. It has also been coined in connection with Paul Milgram's 1994 paper "Augmented Reality: A Class of Displays on the Reality-Virtuality Continuum," and used in products like Microsoft Hololens and Snapchat lenses (filters), which define see-through and window-on-the-world overlays. The key difference between the lenses we have discussed, is in being on opposing ends of a shared-experience spectrum: headsets isolate, while spheres stand for community and visceral emotion . Therefore we can already distinguish personal-lenses from crowd-lenses. Here it is important to understand that forming crowds is very different to connecting individuals.
In contrast to the lens-spaces, I would like to refer to canvas-spaces denoting any other types of media related entertainment, displays and stages, where original environment, show surfaces and technology can typically be differentiated well. These forms of entertainment cannot encompass the audience with the same fidelity, so their lens is permeable by definition. In their canvas-space many types of lights and emitting sources affect each other and the environment.
The lens dissolves displays, while the canvas-space remains full of them!
... Continue : Part 3
At first sight both lens types deepen the divide between the real and virtual by technical means of augmentation and mediation, but considering the persuasive aspect of images (see Le Bon quote above); for crowds it is not. This is also the case for digital natives, who have spent more of their lives with various types of screens than without. Here is why:
In a 2022 interview by Alex Heath for The Verge, Keanu Reeves noted that for digital natives, space is completely synthesised: "Who cares if it's real?" Older generations cling to that “legacy feeling”, which Paul Milgram analogously foresaw from a technical perspective in 1994:
Of course, as computer graphic and imaging technologies continue to advance, the day will certainly arrive in which it will not be immediately obvious whether the primary world is real or simulated, a situation corresponding to the centre of the RV continuum.
Milgramm, 1994
The dichotomy in immersion used to be real vs. virtual, but that actually gets dissolved through technology and media exposure.
The deep emotions felt among crowds might be why games like Fortnite have begun to mimic live show formats. Similarly, live entertainment now often patches virtual content (aR) into the stage space. What is convincing to remote audiences breaks the magic of immersion for visitors at the events, who need to gaze at such hybrids on image magnification (imag) screens or phones.
To be meaningful, the challenge for live entertainment lies in designing spaces that combine interactivity, free movement, and communal affection, while maintaining a single unified viewing experience.
Headsets and the Sphere engulf us in fully-rendered sophisticated worlds, acting as the primary light sources within their respective visual bubbles, in which display and content become equivalents. Both offer similar capabilities in reproductive fidelity. Headsets render stereoscopically, while large domes still provide a convincing experience since their audience is placed beyond the threshold of depth distinction (schematic), and anchored by a real stage at the focal point.
Nevertheless, both immersions can break if there are visual obstructions. What is too much haze or stage light in a Sphere? Is there a fleck or smudge on the headset optics? Therefore, contact lenses may represent the ultimate form factor for the latter. The term "lens" feels apt generally. It has also been coined in connection with Paul Milgram's 1994 paper "Augmented Reality: A Class of Displays on the Reality-Virtuality Continuum," and used in products like Microsoft Hololens and Snapchat lenses (filters), which define see-through and window-on-the-world overlays. The key difference between the lenses we have discussed, is in being on opposing ends of a shared-experience spectrum: headsets isolate, while spheres stand for community and visceral emotion . Therefore we can already distinguish personal-lenses from crowd-lenses. Here it is important to understand that forming crowds is very different to connecting individuals.
In contrast to the lens-spaces, I would like to refer to canvas-spaces denoting any other types of media related entertainment, displays and stages, where original environment, show surfaces and technology can typically be differentiated well. These forms of entertainment cannot encompass the audience with the same fidelity, so their lens is permeable by definition. In their canvas-space many types of lights and emitting sources affect each other and the environment.
The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.
Dorothea Lange, Los Angeles Times (13 Aug. 1978)
I argue that we can equate Lange’s camera with screen since both have become ubiquitous and instantaneous counterparts. So the subjective and experiential self and eye define the lens, not the form of the display or recorder. This is a radically new understanding of the meaning, which is:
A lens is any comprehensively sophisticated space curated by a narrative. In essence, a lens signifies strong immersion. While realities and virtual environments merge, fact and fiction become more important distinctions, when defining a lens’ narrative, story, or motive for audiences to identify with.
Initially, we saw lenses as immersive environments tied to opaque display technologies, like advanced headsets and large domes. This limited view excluded other media and live show designs. However, by understanding today's synthesised viewing habits, and by redefining lenses as spaces with strong narratives, canvas-spaces can also become lenses, if they provide a compelling motive.
Some shows and entertainment types remain as canvases, delivering excellent results following present traditions and form. Others should adopt the broader lens concept to enhance their offerings. When they do, their primary task is to create rich environments and foster shared community feelings, achieving their immersive potential outside of fully mediated spaces by leveraging their unique and combined strengths. This entails strong narratives, seamlessly blending physical and digital elements, functioning well for both individuals and groups, and disguising displays when they cannot dissolve.
