Hidden Pasts - Digital Futures: Festival of Immersive Arts

You know that great feeling when something you have been planning for a LONG time finally comes to fruition? That describes the feeling I had yesterday at the Hidden Pasts - Digital Futures launch down at SFU Woodwards. I have been helping SFU put this festival together for the past several months... running between institutions, dealing with technical directors and artists, writing guide scripts for a series of amazing interactive exhibits, and so on an so forth. Yesterday we finally ushered the pubic through a series of installations by the likes of Stan Douglas and the NFB Digital Studio (Circa 1948), and Sarah Kenderdine & Jeffrey Shaw (Unmakeable Love, Place Hampi, Pure Land), and Robert Lepage (Fragmentation). These are fully immersive experiences that really need to be experienced to be believed. Stepping back in time to 1948 Vancouver's Hogan's Alley, travelling to the Dunhuang Caves on China, or wandering virtually around the huge world heritage site of Hampi India, You really begin to see the impact of works like these on our understanding of history, geography, conservation, and our sense of place.