Wednesday, September 27, 2023
Alterface unveils two new interactive theatres and introduces a compact mobile solution
InPark Magazine: For over two decades, Alterface has been a pioneer in the interactive entertainment landscape, blending cutting-edge technology with a deep understanding of its clients’ needs. Thanks to its compact, easy-to-install technology, this bespoke approach is the key to unlock the full potential of an interactive ride.
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5 comments:
Interactive theater is such a fun and unique experience. The experiences described in this article remind me of rides at DisneyWorld such as Star Tours, Toy Story Mania, and Soarin, which are all interactive or immersive in a way. These experiences also remind me of escape rooms, where everyone participating in the rooms has to work together to escape, much like the “Rainbow Dash’s Weather Factory” where guests have to work together as a team to “bring back the sunshine to Ponyville.” The MovieMax experience is particularly interesting because of its mobile ability, easy set up, and minimal operator involvement. It is very similar to carnivals in the way it can be set up and torn down quickly. This would be a great experience to rent for large parties or fundraising events. Overall Alterface is taking a unique and innovative approach to interactive and immersive experiences. It would be interesting to see if AlterFace eventually works its way into live theater.
This is so cool! Other countries outside the U.S. have such incredible technology that never fails to surprise. Japan has incredible technology that is ahead of the rest of the world in many different forms. I think that this is a really cool idea. It is the two really fun activities of a movie, and a classic amusement park laser blaster ride. I would love to be able to see/play an actual screening/game here and experience it first hand. I also could be interpreting this wrong, but from what I am hearing, the seats are also interactive like a 4D theater which adds a whole other layer to the fun. I have always wanted to visit Japan, and this is another reason added to my list as to why. I hope that other countries follow suit and soon many people all over the world will be able to experience this fun!
This article actually made me think about something I wrote for last week’s comment, where I talked about how the current audience is always looking for something more ‘exciting’ and evokes more sensories. Interactive theatres, especially ones that have smoke, rain, motion, and a bunch of other special effects, are becoming more and more popular because they provide a different kind of sensory experience, in particular on the tactile elements. Although I also believe them to be fun, I do wonder if they make us “numb” to the old visual-and-audio-only cinematic experience. If people get used to having all senses involved in movie theatres, will they expect the same from watching a play? Perhaps this means that they will find sitting in a theatre watching a two-hour-long show too boring. In this case, what does it mean for the designers? Do the designers level up the threshold in which their artistic elements excite the audience?
While this company might be creating “interactive theater” I don’t think it comes close to the kind of experiences you can get from real live performances. I wish that this article had gone into more detail about how the technology worked, but it appears to me that it is just a small movie theater with fancy seats and patrons holding video game controllers. I would describe this as more an example of a fancy cooperative video game, than “theater”
What did interest me a little more was the touring setup of their theater system. While this also seems like somewhat of a gag, the engineering challenge of fitting all of this technology into a container that can be shipped around the world does sound very interesting to me. This does spark me to wonder if there might be a use of packing touring theater into shipping containers rather than box trucks so that the show is not reliant on moving only by road. This would be a logistics challenge to organize, but if theatrical tours were packed into containers rather than trucks, those containers could be transported in many different ways including trucks, trains, boats, or planes.
I am personally a big fan of interactive and immersive theater and have had the privilege to experience a few different forms of it myself. While I think the experiences discussed in the article are very interesting, I feel like calling it theater may be a slight mischaracterization, and it even tests the line of being live entertainment. If there are no performers and minimal operation required, does this make it more similar to a movie? It seems to me it's just a group playing a game together, but it is cool technology nonetheless. I do wonder if the rise of experiences like this will eventually make it so theater is seen less as an art form and more as a pure entertainment form. Theater is a location to express beauty and profound ideas, just like a song, movie, or painting. While I still think it should generally be entertaining, I feel like this makes it seem more like something purely fun without art. While that is not a bad thing, I think it is still something to be wary of.
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