HowlRound Theatre Commons: Mary John Frank is a New York-based director and choreographer. MJ's film and XR works have been shown at Lincoln Center, the Hammer Museum, Pioneer Works, film festivals, and more. She has been selected to competitive tech residencies, grants, and awards from Google Daydream, IBM, Panavision, and New Inc. And she also held production leadership roles at film studios like Warner Bros. and Paramount. Wow. Today we met to speak about her VR/360 project, From Sea to Rising Sea.
2 comments:
The title of this article immediately made me curious to read it. Reading it and hearing this artist talk about their work was fascinating. Her path from the dance world to the film world to immersive experience sounds fascinating, and it sounds like it gives her a really unique perspective on all of those areas. I liked how she talked about finding 360 filmmaking and VR because she felt that flatscreen wasn’t the right medium for what she wanted to do. That clarity of mind and bravery to say “what I know isn’t what I need so I’ll learn something new until I find what I need to tell this story” is incredible and so inspiring. In addition, the way she spoke about flatscreen vs. 3D as being a medium made me start thinking about what a medium is in art. It’s what an artist uses to create their art, so in a way whether something is flat or three dimensional is an element of medium, which is really cool to think about.
Gonna start off by saying I absolutely hate virtual reality. In today's political and cultural landscape of detaching from the tangible world and environment, I think it is inherently harmful. However art is art and it is important to explore mediums from all angles (literally). I think Mary John's upcoming career is so cool and interesting. Mixing dance and mixed mediums is awesome. 360 filmmaking is super cool and I love how it can immerse the viewer to almost feel like they are being an active part of the art being made and performed. I'm saying this with the idea in mind that 360 filmmaking is a moving camera, but according to Mary John, and ym goldfish brain didn't realize the rest of the world meant VR. The “global gag” is also very interesting, which I did not know about and cant full comprehend BUT i think it would be cool to see the performance recorded so it would be more accessible to those who don't have VR headsets.
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