Designing the exhibition modus of virtual experiences: Virtual reality installations at film festivals

We are currently witnessing an increase of virtual reality sections at several major film festivals exhibiting a growing number of experiences combining cinema and VR (this field is also known as cinematic virtual reality (CVR)). However, we are still lacking a homogeneous exhibition modus for these hybrid experiences. Moreover, the installation’s context is further complicated when some CVR experiences make use of additional media including scenography, spatial sound, and live performance to transition their audience into the virtual experience. As such, special attention is given to the exhibition modus of the work, and therefore the installation must be considered part of the experience design. This paper investigates some trends within installation design at film festivals exemplified by a selection of six works exhibited at the Venice 2019 VR selection. These works are initially divided according to the design strategies of ‘the story room’, ‘the attraction window’ and ‘the performance space’. Through interviews with industry professionals about their retrospective thoughts on the installation design for the experiences, the paper uncovers some design considerations and strategies, including consideration of installations as a transitional element of the audience experience design, how to approach audience put-through and spectatorship, ways to ensure transportability and distribution of design, and dealing with venue specificity and adaptability of the installation, among others.