SXSWORLD

1 8 SXS W O R L D | F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 9 | SXSW.COM When you listen to Jessica Brillhart talk about the "immer- sive space," it sounds like science fiction. "You have to, in a lot of ways, convince someone that they're somewhere else, where the world is much richer and goes much deeper than they can perceive," she explains. "It's like extending beyond our biological ability to perceive the world." Again, it sounds like science fic- tion. But this immersive space is not only something humanity has been working on for a long time — it is poised for a big breakthrough. Since the dawn of human exis- tence, we've spent a lot of energy developing languages, technolo- gies and media for the purpose of telling stories and transporting our fellow humans to realities that are not their own. And whether we're using our minds to con- struct these worlds or we're watching them through the frame of a TV or cinema screen, the end goal is the same — we want to live in other worlds, even if only briefly. But even at the height of our cur- rent storytelling technology, we're just looking at these new worlds through some kind of frame. If we ever want to step through that frame and actually wander around worlds unlike our own, it's going to take a confluence of technology and artistic craft to create real, engaging, immersive spaces. While technology is starting to catch up thanks to investments in consumer VR from the likes of Google and Facebook, there's a small problem on the artistic side: VR is not a conven- tional medium. "Filmmakers have a tendency to think that VR or any immersive content just means it's a frame, but bigger," says Brillhart, who has unravelled the language of traditional filmmaking and built a new one for the immersive space. She spent eight years working inside the great tech machine, serving as principal film- maker for Google's virtual reality division. There, she not only created films in VR, but also helped develop and test Google's very cool Jump Jessica Brillhart: Leading the Way Into Immersive Space By Neil Miller continued on p.20 Photo by Catalina Kulczar-Marin

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