Inside the Immersive Movement: Exclusive Insights from the NEXT Immersive Summit

*The site of the NEXT Summit, the Herald Examiner Building in downtown Los Angeles*

What do Disneyland, Meow Wolf, League of Legends, and Nordo have in common?

It’s Saturday June 3rd in beautiful Downtown LA. 9 a.m. We arrive bleary-eyed looking for the free coffee. We sit. 250 attendees and 50 speakers have congregated in one room. Welcome. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you.

Mission: Figure out what the heck this immersive movement is and who is a part of it.

Top Secret Mission: All evidence points to Nordo fitting into Immersive Universe, but how exactly? And what new elements can guide Nordo’s development into that “next big thing”?

Where: Los Angeles, California at the Next Stage Summit by the Immersive Experience Institute. Held at the beautiful Herald Examiner Building where Arizona State University has opened a new, technologically advanced center for design and the arts, this conference dedicated to all things Immersive was 4 years in the making because of COVID interruptions. The organizers breathed a huge sigh of relief to open their doors to the hundreds of guests from all over the world.

The Content: Over the course of 2 days there are 10 time slots for presentations. There are individual speakers and panels convened on specific topics. At any given time, there are up to 3 options to choose from and attend. A total of 50 presenters! There were talks on producing, writing, marketing, virtual reality, gaming, costuming, one-on-one performances, audience development, the list goes on. Intense. An overload really.

Here are a few examples of those people that I either had a direct connection with or who touched me with their talks…

· Wendy McCellan Anderson who started in the theaters of NYC (like our own Erin Brindley!) before directing 115 performers on the Disneyland Starcruiser Project and now acts as lead storyteller for Riot Games ensuring all the narratives live in one consistent world.

· Writer Margaret Kerrison who spent 6 years with scripting the narrative for Disneyland Galaxy’s Edge Star Wars Project and wrote a book on immersive storytelling. Extremely helpful to hear tips from a seasoned agent working on some of the largest projects in immersive.

· Nonny de la Peña presented on her astounding Virtual Reality career that has spanned decades and has been showcased around the world. She did the first VR exhibition at Sundance for example in 2012. Her focus: bring a spotlight on the injustices of hunger, immigration, and incarceration using VR. She’s the real deal using tech to bring about societal change.

· Terry Pettigrew-Rolapp and Tommy Wallach, the founders of Hatch Escapes and The Ministry of Peculiarities (I am so envious of that name) shared ideas on how to move the genre of escape rooms forward into something more narrative and not just a collection of puzzles.

· Joanna Garner, Senior Story Creative Director for Meow Wolf, spoke on becoming our better selves through art and how “reality” is co-created when artists and audiences interact in space. Some of you may remember Joanna authored a piece that happened at Nordo in 2017, “Please Open Your Mouth”.

*A production shot from Please Open Your Mouth at the Culinarium in 2017, photo credit: Ryan Warner*

There were numerous others. Here is the list of speakers if you’re interested.

The Puzzle: Here, amongst all these talented creators are clues to the answers to our Top Secret Mission. They’re here just screaming to be found. You see, Nordo will be a mix of the disciplines gathered at this conference. But the exact recipe is alluding us. How will we continue to tell stories? How will we capture the interest of our future audiences? This is why Erin and I attended this Summit

So, what actually happened?

After a couple of days of escape rooms, the Le Brea Tar Pits, the Museum of Jurassic Technology (see most important side note below) we arrive on Saturday morning , and it begins. And… where do we start? How about, immersive is undefinable and always will be, so stop trying! That’s not the question to be asking! The question we should be asking is: how is immersive valuable?

We dove right in.

Let me clarify - immersive is undefined. And likely, always will be. The term encompasses too much. It’s a new term for ideas both old and new. A zeitgeist. And why is that? Well, because it is offering something that people need. It has commercial and social value. And after many talks, and many opinions, the general consensus is that the new word scratches that very old itch for storytelling. Humans love storytelling. Immersive is a new approach to storytelling.

Transformation is at the heart of it. The immersive arts create fully functional fictional worlds that engage and transform the perceptions of the participants. And transformation is the beating heart of storytelling. The heart beats, and creates storytelling.

In a nutshell, immersive is themed entertainment. Or more broadly perhaps, themed engagement.

(Not everyone in the immersive world is attempting to entertain, some educate. The aforementioned, Nonny de la Peña’s work blew my mind and is remarkably educational, and does not care to be or need to be entertaining.)

And whether you are a solo performer engaging a single audience member journeying through self-exploration (like Spencer Milone Williams or Whisperlodge) or engaging millions of tourists with a mega popular intellectual property like Star Wars the goals are the same- to capture a person’s attention and take them on a journey. And the processes of design are the same regardless of scale.

All of these fields: museums, theaters, theme parks, video games, escape rooms, etc., realize that they are all trying to do the same thing with the same mechanics just using slightly different terms. But the big umbrella over it all is Immersive.

And, before the word immersive was common place, Nordo was doing just that with a fictionalized chef and restaurant in the warehouse of Theo Chocolate in Fremont back in 2009. And Nordo will continue to do that because that is art.

*Annastasia Workman in The Cabinet of Curiosities, Washington Hall. Photo Credit: Bruce Clayton Tom*

Conclusion: Overall, the conference was spectacular. A success. Honestly, it was a marathon of introductions to new people and ideas which spun me through heights of inspiration, “This is so damn cool I can’t wait to get to work”, and lows of intimidation, “How the hell could I ever do something as beautiful as that?”

The people that attended it ran the gamut of skills from producer to writer to technician to performer. Some have done all of those things at one point in their careers, some all at the same time. Some were new to the field and others were pioneers. Some were just beginning and others have held high level positions as Imagineers at Disney. The talent at the conference was .

Attendees may have recognized one another, may have worked with one another, but before the conference they did not recognize one another as a community. But at this conference a community was realized. There was a fluency of language. And Nordo speaks this language. Whether we are producing site-specific works like we did from 2009 to 2015 or building an institution like we did from 2015 to 2022 we speak this language. And as we transition we will continue to speak this language. Nordo is themed, it engages, and it is transformative.

The Question for the Future:What alchemy of these elements of narrative, installation art, performance, game mechanics and technology will be brewed together to create the next flavor of Nordo? You’ll have to wait and see, but, it’s brewing.

Most Important Side Note: Also, I must say I visited a place that I have worshipped from afar for over 20 years ever since I read the book Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonders by Lawrence Weschler. The book singlehandedly changed my mind on how to approach creating art. And the world really. The place is called The Museum of Jurassic Technology. And stepping from the bright concrete sidewalks of LA and into the dark, musty corridors of the museum I crossed a threshold and lost an entire afternoon perusing the mind bending exhibits

It’s an American art institution. It is truly a museum, a place to stand in the presence of the muses, “a place where a person can stand aloof from every day affairs”, a place where we experience “the incongruity born of the overzealous spirit in the face of unfathomable phenomena”. Their words not mine.

You have to give yourself over to it and let it tell its story. It’s a novel weaving of fiction and non-fiction seamlessly before your very eyes. It’s an alternate reality (What is alternate reality? Oh, this we will delve into more in an upcoming entry!)