Thursday, 12 April 2018

Watching a film about virtual reality in a virtual reality theatre


Yesterday 11th April became a WoW day when in the evening I entered the world of virtual reality sensory experience for the latest Spielberg blockbuster about the world of virtual reality sensory experience. Ready Player One, to take a break from my reality world in which first thing that morning I had agreed to elective eye surgery to save my deteriorating sight.

As someone who for seven decades since the conclusion of WW2  has resisted the fair ground thrill ride I decided  to experience that the  latest Cineworld 4Dbox total cinema sensory theatre, ignoring the safety warnings that the presentation is not suitable for children, pregnant women, those with severe disability and elders such as  me and in this instance those whose  sight is affected by 3D and where according to staff at the Cineworld Newcastle I am the oldest individual to dare,

I was inspired to choose the recent addition to Cineworld Newcastle instead of a standard seat in mixed seat auditorium after earlier in the week watching the BBC mini series recreating the assessment and training of the WW2 Special Operations Executives who were trained to be parachuted behind enemy lines and create havoc after one applicant overcame her lifelong fear of heights by a vertical climb of sixty feet and then crossing between trees by walking on a rope while holding another above. The series is a form of virtual reality because there are safety features to prevent accidents and psychology profiling to avoid the unsuitable. Then in WW2 people were selected and trained to be killed and to accept the likelihood they would be killed or would need to take their own lives to prevent torture and revealing the identities and locations of others.

Did I fear a theatre fairground thrill ride synchronised with a screened film more than I fear elective eye surgery?

The Cineworld 4Dbox experience has existed for several years but it was possible to also experience only the Ghost Train effects in a mixed auditorium of standard and  sensory seats and which I tried when wanting to watch the latest Mad Max at the O2 Millennium arena in London, and where following the creation of the latest total theatre experience at the Middlesbrough Cineworld, the older sears have been transferred to the Bolden multiplex where for example someone with disability can sit in their wheel chair  while their able bodied partner enjoys the full effects experience in an adjacent seat.

Last year Sky TV introduced us to Westworld in which standard human beings can physically enter a virtual reality world where artificially created human being lookalikes provide the experience entertainment until one of them realises she is being memory wiped and bodily reassembled as guests shoot, kill and rape. In Ready Player One participants create an Avatar of their choosing but remain outside wired up and with sensory pads, and one assumes individual comprehensive sensory unit pods as well as desk top screen, lap tops, ipads and iphones variations of today and where the experience of being inside is an antidot to the reality lives of uncontrolled global capitalism while maniac leaders  like Trump and Putin use social media to commence to make real devastating human extermination war

The game being played in the Speilberg film combines the search for clues leading to keys which will unlock the prize of a golden egg (replacing the Golden ticket of Charlie’s Chocolate Factory), which will enable the winner to gain control of the half a billion wealth of the game owner who has died and left a virtual reality Will. The Game is also fought in the real world as the Chief Executive of the second biggest game franchise wants total domination and hires a real world assassin using drones to track and destroy anyone who appears close to winning the game in addition to an army of players to try and gain the prize, together with a team of creative game creators to work out the clues for their army of paid players. The film also has a contemporary take on debt collectors a bounty hunter who can restrain their victims on in punishment pods managed by the rogue led game corporation.

A feature of the legacy created by the creator of the Oasis world game is his virtual reality museum in which his whole life everything he has experienced, read and said cab be recreated and studied but unlike my prediction made in 2003 when I commenced the Artman 101 project, the ability of anyone, anywhere, anytime to see, hear and record what anyone, everywhere, all time experiences, with the required technology is  fixed,  whereas in my world there is the ability to alter the record of  all past experience to reflect the views and wishes of the individual at the controls. This means that only hard physical files of information will remain of value as all digital records can be changed or erased.

What I did not foresee is the harvesting of data by governments, global enterprises including those operated by crime orientated. The BBC published a list of the 12 instances where government records suddenly were lost from laps tops and then Edwin Snowden walked out with millions of records hidden in a memory stick in a game cube to beat the security controls.

What I had not appreciated until recently is how our understanding of how the brain works coupled with the creation of artificial intelligence and the ability to create digital communication programmes can affect the outcomes of elections, develop targeted sales programmes and harvest intelligence profiles of people in their worldwide millions. It is evident that digital communications technology can also be used to alter and control individual minds as well as to do so collectively. The era of the contemporary Manchurian Candidate has arrived.

Yesterday evening venturing into the total sensory theatre of the Cineworld 4DBOX I also wanted to understand something of what generations will experience in the developments already planned in process of delaying applications until sufficient commercial sales make sufficient profits to add to the wealth holders and cover development costs.

The present 4D theatrical experiences is only a foretaste of what will come. At Newcastle Cineworld there are eight rows of 20 seats in group of four all interlinked with two units of seats at the back and four units of four at the front allowing for two-wheel chairs uses o enjoy the Ghost train effects which comprised controlled angled sprays of water to represent real water, rain or blood or other substances such as sick. The temperature can also be controlled with icy or warm blasts of air and auditorium can be filled from the smoke of an explosion. I had anticipated the sensations of galling climbing or jerk movements from being hit by a truck or fail to stop before a wall. Unexpected is the back of seats so you can feel hit by a punch or being stabbed in the back. I am no sure how often I will repeat the experience, but it is the only way to experience I film about entering virtual reality world.  The young male assistant  with whom I spoke at the end of the film in the auditorium said he had watched the film twice. The last performance was last night as to day it is Rampage.

Yesterday evening 11th April 2018  my son in law celebrated his birthday with one of my daughters enjoying a seafood meal  while at the same time on BBC1 a bank manager from the seaside town where they live was cooking seafood for fisherman on the waterfront in Peru under the direction of one the country’s leading creators of national dishes, reminding of a meal eaten at a seafood restaurant which had commenced with a dressed crab starter and a bottle of Sancerre followed delicious fish dishes  no longer remembered from some three decades ago at  the French seaside town of Le Touquet.

Earlier in the day I agreed to elective I surgery later his summer to have my eyesight visiting rhe specialist eye hospital in Sunderland in the afternoon to have a back photo taken to check the back of the eye to assess if there was also any damaged caused by my diabetes,