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With a passion for immersive technology, Payne keeps pushing boundaries in the ever- evolving landscape of creative content
meant that, from an AV perspective, having everything built in real time was an absolute godsend. We had an experience that went live in May 2023 in line with Mental Health Awareness Month, called Monolith by artist Jack Dartford, that is a great example of the power of real time. Outernet’s official charity ADOT partnered with suicide prevention organisation Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) , to raise awareness around social anxiety. Monolith was a crowd-reactive audio-visual installation, featuring audio work by sound designer Halina Rice. It entailed a particle model on the main wall of the Now building, where the more people that came into the space, the more the model became frantic – expanding around the room to reflect social anxiety. The screen was essentially mimicking what you can feel in real time. It also had real-time audio elements. This meant that, as the number of people coming into the room increased, the audio became more intense. I think – from an audio-visual perspective – it’s about pushing these experiences much further and giving audiences something they might not have had a chance to experience before, as well as being able to promote an important message about topics like mental health. Any advice for someone hoping to be a creative in the immersive AV world? My advice would be to understand and educate yourself on the tools available. Also, there are so many experiences out there at the moment – the experience economy is constantly growing. I would suggest to keep up to date and go and experience it. Of course, make sure you don’t forget about the story or narrative of what you’re trying to create. Technology is moving rapidly. AI is a perfect example of that, considering where it was only 12 months ago. We’re in an incredibly exciting time and I think the audience’s understanding and desire for communal immersive experiences is going to keep growing. We as content creators, artists and immersive experience producers have a responsibility not to get lazy – not only to do what we’ve done before, but truly keep pushing boundaries and give audiences something new, innovative and thought out. As audiences become more savvy, they can quickly pick out something that’s had little effort put into it. I also believe that audiences will fatigue from the over-reliance on using AI models to produce content. We have a responsibility to those Immersive AV is changing fast. What does the future hold? audiences to be better than that – and really put a lot of thought into what we are creating and how we want to make them feel – creating the best experiences we possibly can.
experiential elements. We’d run the risk of alienating audiences and turning into a space they wouldn’t want to come to. Nobody wants to go into a room and just be screamed at by ads. That would have detrimental effects to brands – and for us as a space. The first years were spent building the creative and content strategies for Outernet, as well as producing the immersive experiences. That meant any day could involve producing experiences through commissioning artists – or production companies. What does your role as creative director entail? It also involved overseeing the creative studio from a content creative side for our events. Commissioning and curating using our in-house studio, which consists of a range of producers, designers, real- time technologists, audio specialists and editors that we oversee from our creative side within the team. Aside from making in-house content, editorial and branded experiences, we also work directly with our brands as well. From my perspective, that could be in an advisory capacity – on what’s the best way to bring creative to life on our screens. Are there any standout AV tools? Coming from a somewhat traditional content creation background – rather than immersive experiences – I knew very little about real-time technology. The entire world of creative technology was a very steep learning curve for me, but I think it came at a perfect time as the world was beginning to awake to the possibilities of interactivity and real-time technology. We’ve always had an ambitious vision for Outernet from a content perspective – but on a canvas at this scale, it came with many challenges and raised questions. How do we create content quickly, at scale? How do we make amends to that content? How do we rotate through pieces of content? It
Nobody wants to go into a room and be screamed at by ads. That would have detrimental effects to brands, and us as a space”
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