★
Electric Dreams. SA Museum Front Lawns. 19 Feb 2022
Producer Electric Dreams from Britain creates dynamic amusements using interactive virtual reality (VR) technology originated by London’s StudioGoGo. There are a number of VR shows at the Fringe and Electric Dreams is presenting two of them, as well as a day-long conference on immersive storytelling and a film with sonified data.
VR Swings “Volo: Dreams of Flight” is a swing park on the lawns of the SA Museum on North Terrace. On offer are four VR experiences, so I suppose you can see all four if you stump up $10 four times. The shows are thematically linked celebrating the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s sketches of aerial machines: Chute, Glider, Thopter and Copter. Your kids won’t care about that.
I was directed to a swing associated with one of the four visual experiences. Although publicity suggests I can make a choice, I was not offered a choice. A nice man helped me on with the eye-gear and I started swinging.
The first thing I noticed was that I don’t like swinging any more, but I give it a go, for my editor. I’m moving through space as abstracted trees and scenery of artificial colours rush past me then, whoosh! I have a stomach-dislocating rapid descent. You can hardly believe you are only on a swing! After a while, I noticed that the graphics are not fully developed and seem more like a sketch or an outline, and just aren’t very interesting.
In VR world, you are always moving forward, but a swing, of course, takes you alternatively forward and backward. My body and brain badly handled these two bits of conflicting information. I stopped swinging, but the VR stops moving, so that was no fun. Now I started dragging my feet on the ground, waiting for the whole thing to be over, like when you are on a bad weather cruise. Thankfully it ended after only 5 minutes as indicated in the printed Fringe program, and not the 15 minutes promised online. Yet, before I started, the eight-year-old girl next to me was swinging hammer and tong, maybe having the time of her life. Maybe she should have written the review.
David Grybowski
When: 19 Feb to 20 March
Where: SA Museum Front Lawns
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
