| The promise of a "virtual reality" in which users may immerse themselves into other worlds and other realities has been little more than that, a promise, for the past thirty or so years. While numerous projects have been produced in research settings or theme park environments, modern consumer-grade products allow us to bring the experience home. Until recently, little work has been done to combine the existing hardware tools of immersive and interactive media into a home setting where the average person, not a researcher, can explore these fantastical imaginary worlds.;Seymour Deeply is, at its core, an immersive interactive storybook. The project uses commercial/consumer off the shelf (COTS) stereoscopic (3D Television) and gestural control (Microsoft Kinect 1.0) products to construct an immersive playspace that is not site-specific. It takes the work of virtual reality out of the lab and brings it to the living room. Its goal is to prove to those who doubt the power of stereoscopic 3D, who we term "stereoskeptics", that adding stereodepth to an interactive experience increases the immersion for the viewer/player and can add narrative meaning. The entire narrative of Seymour Deeply is explored as a transmedia experience, with the backstory told in comic book form and the major portion of the narrative told as a playable interactive experience. |
