The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities creates a XR pop-up experience to support local high-streets and communities
Next week, the University of Oxford’s offshoot “TORCH” (The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities) is leveraging XR technology for a pop-up event to create a narrative experience at the historic university called Fantasy Futures: Imagining Immersive Innovation.
For two weeks, the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies is hosting the gamified immersive experience that stylises the location’s famous gargoyles as XR visualisations to communicate a climate change message.
TORCH is collaborating with Vicon Motion Systems to enable the animation of the gargoyles. The project aims to share the university’s humanities research and reach diverse, younger audiences through a free event. Moreover, the group is looking to scale the Fantasy Futures event nationally and internationally to help address the growing decline of high streets.
The Former Director of TORCH, Professor Wes Williams, who led the research behind the event and co-created the XR pop-up, noted that the experience “conjugates the visual exploration of hybrid ‘Humanimal’ creatures with place-based gaming narrative to create an innovative experiment in participatory research.”
Professor Williams also added:
Fantasy Futures focuses on the often-overlooked representations of hybrid creatures in Oxford’s architectural heritage to bring to life for younger audiences the effects of climate change in the Anthropocene on the city’s built environment.
Fantasy Futures: Imagining Immersive Innovation also aims to secure more commercial investment and partnerships by 2025 to boost the city’s cultural organisations.
XR Success via Collaboration
Additionally, TORCH created the upcoming Fantasy Futures: Imagining Immersive Innovation pop-up in collaboration with Creative Industries leads Brian Mitchell, former Head of Audiomotion Studios, and Ian Wallman, a Photographer and Virtual Content Creator, to ensure an engaging experience.
Brian Mitchell, currently Founding Director of The Mocap Academy (TMA), explained, “the Fantasy Futures project has been an interesting adventure that has enabled us to explore and get innovative with the technology for the shared experiences when telling this extremely engaging monstrous story.”
TORCH notes that partnering with experts like Mitchell and Wallman allows the XR pop-up to engage with the public while explaining its research outcomes, thanks to the expert insights of its partners.
Mitchell also added:
We have been supported by some great companies and individuals on the journey, from concept artists to character creation, game engine environments to audio recording and effects. The motion tracking system we used for the viewer interaction was supplied by Vicon Motion Systems. Vicon is the market leader in this technology and are constantly pushing the limits to open up new opportunities.
“We will see more applications like this tech to create fully interactive shared experiences in all sorts of ways in the future,” Mitchell remarked.
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