The pedestrian zone: not for everyone. Full, hectic, loud, especially on Champions League match days, when Bayern and opposing fans parade through the city at the top of their voices. If you want to celebrate the opening of an exhibition opposite the “Donisl”, where a few hundred Dinamo Zagreb supporters are repeating the battle cries in a multi-throated and persistent manner, you have to raise your voice loudly. But people from the cultural scene know this: if you can’t make yourself heard, it’s difficult.
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And so cultural representative Anton Biebl is happy to be able to speak into a microphone to give the crowd of guests on the former Sport Münzinger site some good news: The town hall is being given a new temporary use by the cultural and creative industries. “The Portal” is offering an exhibition of narrative virtual reality experiences until the end of the year. It will feature 360-degree films and interactive works that have premiered at international festivals, including award winners from the Venice Biennale with “End of Night”, “Emperor”, “Flow” and “Oto’s Planet” as well as the Emmy-nominated work “You Destroy. We Create”. Many are already considered milestones in immersive storytelling, a cultural form that Biebl believes will have a similarly revolutionary and resounding effect as the printing press.
Immersive storytelling? In the specialist literature, immersion is described as the ability to immerse yourself in a narrative world and perceive it as real for a limited period of time. The viewer should have the feeling of being part of the story themselves, hence the claim of “The Portal”: Stories you can feel. Portal director Astrid Kahmke says: “Narrative XR is a new medium that is emotionally, aesthetically and intellectually gripping, but is growing behind closed doors. We show what international artists have developed over the past ten years and how they have not only explored technical boundaries, but also created new forms of storytelling.”
Max Permantier from the Bavarian Film Television Fund speaks of a “look into the future of storytelling”, which requires “abandoning familiar perspectives and opening up to new things”. Kahmke adds: “We want to create visibility for the beauty, the touching, for new visual aesthetics and internationally successful works that not only deserve to be seen by a broad audience, but also show how far immersive storytelling has already progressed.”