I S S U E # 1:
The Mobile Truth
There’s a mobile myth, wrapped in hype – and a
mobile truth, grounded in reality. This issue includes
a cross-section of perspectives on mobile as it
exists today – an attempt to separate expectation
from experience.
PROFILE
MEET THE MOBILE DEVICE
OF TOMORROW: YOU
BY BIZZY COY
Brighter than the Sun’s Creative Director Ian
Sorensen talks about the unlimited possibilities of
mobilizing our “digital personas,” sending them out
into the world to experience performances and events
in immersive ways that have never been done before
— from the comfort of our own homes. By combining
in-home Virtual Reality devices with strategic invenue 360 degree cameras, live-experience creators
can “democratize” their events and exponentially
increase audiences.
Heartbeat of Home © Jim Byrne and Riverdream Productions, 2013.
Ian Sorensen calls me from the future.
Five hours in the future, to be exact – he’s in Ireland
and I’m in New York when we connect on Skype. By
the time we say our goodbyes, I’m convinced he lives
more than five hours ahead. Five years seems more
accurate. His theories on the future of mobile are
thrilling in their outside-the-box ingenuity, and his
enthusiasm spills infectiously through the screen.
SITUATION >> THE MOBILE TRUTH
As Creative Director for Brighter than the Sun (BTTS),
a “Visceral Imaging” company, Sorensen oversees
the creation of immersive, epic-scale environments
and experiences that range from digital scenery
and projection to 3D animation, motion graphics
and video.
You may remember BTTS Executive Creative
Director David Torpey speaking at TEDxBroadway
about their work on Heartbeat of Home, the new
show from the producers of Riverdance. CoFounder Darrell Kavanagh shared the possibility of
enhanced experiences at sports events like Major
League Soccer at Situation’s 2014 event, The
Experiential Factor.
But BTTS is more than an immersive content creator.
“A lot of what we’re doing at the moment is more
strategic, and in a sense, we’re futurists,” Sorensen
says. “Looking at what experiences are going to be
like in the future and working with companies on
technologies that don’t yet exist.”
Sorensen’s theory on the future of mobile is part
technology, part philosophy.
The Dual Personas
“The way we live at the moment, we have two
personas,” he says. “First, we have our physical
persona, the part of us we embody in the physical
space of our everyday lives – the part of us that eats
breakfast, gets the kids ready for school and goes out
into the world.
“And then we have our digital persona. That’s the
part of us that lives in digital space, unbound by time,
geography or other physical limitations – the online
version of ourselves, an avatar of our own creation,
the face we present through social media, email, text
and more.
“When most people talk about mobile, they talk
about physically taking technology with you,” says
Sorensen. “But that’s only one side of the story.
When I look at mobile, I suppose I don’t look at it in
terms of the human being – the physical persona –
taking a piece of technology with them. What I’m
more interested in is the idea of the digital persona
becoming mobile.”
How does that work, exactly?
Well, you likely already have a digital persona that
can do an amazing amount of things in the digital
space. You can talk with someone over Skype in
another time zone. You can find a date in your city
using a mobile app. You can play video games against
dozens of people you’ll never meet in real life.
What will happen in the next five years, Sorensen
explains, is that your digital persona will go mobile.
Mobilizing Your Digital Persona
No longer will you have to bring your cell phone with
you to a concert in order to have a mobile experience at
that concert. Instead, you’ll be equipped to mobilize
your digital persona to go to the concert, which you
can experience from your living room.
“This kind of technology is going to totally
revolutionize the way we think about being mobile,”
Sorensen says. “Without physically going somewhere,
your presence can be somewhere else.
“Traditionally when we think of mobile technology,
we see consumers using it to record the event or to
record the experience of being there. Consumers
document what’s happening or what’s happening
to them.” This is an everyday occurrence in today’s
venues: patrons surreptitiously taking video or
photos while trying not to get caught by the
management (not cool), or taking photos of
themselves and their friends before or after the show
(no problem).
An increased level of mobile engagement happens
when venues specifically invite patrons to participate
in mobile experiences – a text-in campaign to win a
seat upgrade or a free drink. But still, when the lights
go down and the curtain comes up, we expect patrons
to turn off their mobile devices, be “in the moment”
and forsake their digital persona for a couple of hours.
But what if we invited even more digital personas
into the theater?
What if, instead of being limited to the physical
capacity of a thousand seats in a venue, we could
invite an unlimited number of digital viewers to be
present for the event?
“Look at big European football teams like Manchester
United or Real Madrid,” Sorensen says. “They have
millions of fans who will never be able to go to a
game in person, but would love to be there. Imagine
if they could quintessentially buy a $150 or $200 piece
of equipment that would allow their digital persona
to watch the live game from inside a stadium 2,000
miles away, while sitting in their home. Imagine a
stadium that can fit anywhere from 20,000 to 100,000
people suddenly filled with 2 million people. Can you
imagine the effect that would have on live events?”
Sorensen is quick to point out this is far from a typical
TV viewing experience or live broadcast.
“What we’re talking about is Virtual Reality (VR)
– 360 degree virtual space. That means you can go
anywhere and explore anything. You aren’t limited
by your physical presence in the venue. If I want to
sit in the best seat in the house, I can sit in the best
seat in the house. If I want to go far back and see the
whole stage or the whole stadium from a different
angle, why can’t I do that?”
The possibilities are staggering, and it’s more than
just getting a great view of the action. By allowing
consumers to take their digital persona completely
mobile, they can do things they could never do if they
were physically present in the venue.
For example, imagine getting a first-person
perspective from the stage or the field if players or
performers are equipped with hidden body cameras
that at-home consumers can tap into. They could go
from watching the game to watching the goalie’s live
first-person perspective in an instant – impossible if
they were inside the stadium.
An audience of digital personas also increases the
stakes of the event itself.
“Darrell [Kavanagh] has talked about this idea of
people being able to have a voice coming from outside
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the stadium that can impact what’s happening inside
the stadium,” Sorensen says. “Traditionally, football
fans in the stadium let the players know whether
they’re doing well or not by shouting or screaming
or singing songs. Imagine a future where football, or
baseball, or the WWE covers their flat surfaces with
screens and creates a way for fans who are outside
the stadium to interact and change what’s actually
happening physically, visually, inside the stadium.
That impacts not only the fans within the stadium,
but also the players.
“What we’re trying to do is allow mobile to come
back into the space,” Sorensen says, “empowering
the fans outside the venue walls to have a voice and
presence within.”
Virtual Reality: The Key to Mobilizing
Many of us might think of Virtual Reality as a failed
technology of the 1980s and ‘90s, but Sorensen
believes it’s the linchpin to making his theory
a reality.
He points to the recent success of experimental
cross-media artist Chris Milk and his company
VRSE.works, a Virtual Reality production company.
They’ve created VR experiences for clients including
the United Nations, the Museum of Modern Art,
The New York Times, Vice and more, and Sorensen
believes this type of VR production will only become
more commonplace.
Certainly, VR seems to be reaching its tipping
point. In a matter of weeks, consumer-focused VR
technologies Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Sony Project
Morpheus are set to launch. And on September
21, the VR startup Jaunt announced a new $66
million round of strategic funding led by The Walt
Disney Company.
SITUATION >> THE MOBILE TRUTH
And where does Jaunt’s fastest-growing audience
spend most of their time?
On mobile, of course.
A Solution to Experiential Problems
One of the biggest challenges in the live experience
realm is the difficulty of getting patrons to invest
their time, money and energy to attend an event.
From finding a babysitter to finding a parking spot,
going somewhere can be an unwanted hassle for a lot
of potential audiences.
“The amount of time we have on a day-to-day level is
so eaten up by the world we live in now,” Sorensen says.
“That hour or hour and a half that people have left for
entertainment – [live entertainment marketers] are
fighting against Netflix, they’re fighting against all
of these new disruptive models, and it’s bloody hard.
If you add on a 40-minute journey each way on top
of that to get to the event, and money for babysitters
and food and drink … Instead, if you can sit down
on the couch with your loved one and put on a VR
headset – I know it sounds weird and crazy – but
that’s the world we’re going to.”
Making a live event as easy as turning on the
TV means that live experiences will reach bigger
audiences than ever.
“That’s what excites me about things like theater,
concerts and music, mediums that are being really
challenged by the digital times. If the audience
suddenly is exponentially bigger because of a piece
of hardware whose digital avatars can be mobile in
a way that we’ve never been able to do before, that
changes everything.
“It’s the democratization of theater and live
entertainment.”
Sorensen sees a solution to another problem in the
live event space: patrons glued to their phones at
inappropriate times.
“This kind of technology
is going to totally
REVOLUTIONIZE
the way we think about being
”
.
MOBILE
- Ian Sorensen
Brighter than the Sun
Heartbeat of Home © Jim Byrne and Riverdream Productions , 2013.
“People have attention-span issues,” he says. “But in
a sense, VR could solve that on a huge scale.”
How? By taking digital disrupters out of the building
and still allowing them to experience the event
through VR from the comfort of their home.
It might sound counterintuitive, but Sorensen also
believes people will pay better attention to a live
event if they experience it through the framework of
a digital device.
“If you look at the amount of time people are willing
to spend on a device,” he says, “they get wrapped up
in it. If you look at the amount of time on average
you spend watching TV or playing a video game or on
your phone, you can spend hours. The device helps
you stay focused.”
For anyone who’s ever binge-watched Netflix or had
an all-day video game marathon, you know this to
be true. The important thing, Sorensen says, is to
present the most engaging content possible.
“Look at the research being done on Twitter,” he
says. “When people sit down to watch a reality show,
Twitter usage is up and down as it’s happening. But
if it’s a piece of good drama, you get massive peaks
before the show starts, and then the Twitter activity
goes down to nothing, and then massive peaks
afterwards. Because people want to be engaged. If
you’re interested in the performance, you’re going to
be engaged.”
The Digital Persona: Without Limits
The key to mobile success, according to Sorensen, is
to stop playing catch-up with your competitors and
to start thinking big.
“A lot of people look at mobile and look at what other
people are doing and think, that’s what we need to
do,” he says. “The real challenge is to look at your
problem and then figure out how to fix it. Not looking
at what everyone else is doing, but looking for a
better solution.
“Technology changes so fast that if you’re always
trying to do what the other person is doing, that’s all
you’re ever going to do. So think further. That’s the
main problem I see with how businesses think. They
don’t think far enough. But if you have a long-term
goal, you’re on a real path.”
He’s hopeful that businesses in the live event space
will see the possibilities afforded by mobilizing the
digital persona through VR.
“It’s a place where you can literally do anything,”
he says.
“If you want to have an avatar that can fly, you can. If
you want to see parts of the world you’ve never seen,
you can. If you can’t walk and you’re in a wheelchair,
you can walk in the digital space. Here’s a space
where you can do all of that and more.
“It’s right on our doorstep.”
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ISSUE #1: THE MOBILE TRUTH >> FALL 2015