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,