24 November 2017
(Workshop in progress)
(3D teaching in progress)
With virtual reality (VR) technology gradually coming into the mainstream of the market, in order to enhance the increase of students’ professional skills, the College of Creative Studies of the Shanghai Theatre Academy (STA) held the "Virtual Reality and Interactive Sound Design" international expert workshop on new media and innovation at the Virtual Laboratory starting from 15 November 2017, with the aim to enable the students to have a better understanding of VR scene development and grasp the mainstream trends of new media development.
The workshop specially invited Eberlei Oliver Dajo, who is an artist and one of the key members of the German VR technology development team, to be the principal teaching professor, and Fang Shaoqing, who is a Chinese American composer and a special advisor for STA to be the moderator of the workshop. All students from the College of Creative Studies' visual communication class of 2016, animation class of 201t and communication class of 2014 participated in the workshop entirely. The workshop consisted of two main parts. The first part was the applied teaching in VR scene development software in which Oliver introduced the use of Unity 3D, the main development tool of 3D animation. How to create a virtual interactive scene of sound was the main topic of this course, in which he guided the students to practice and create their own 3D interactive scene. The second part was to turn the "virtual” into “real” on the basis of the created virtual scene, in which he asked the students to come up to the front and use the VR equipment to feel and experience the interactive scene of sound which they had created themselves. The Virtual Laboratory provided the VR equipment throughout the workshop, fully realizing the three dimensional teaching, which stimulated the students’ enthusiasm in learning and created a strong atmosphere of learning on-site. The two-day workshop was concluded successfully and benefited the students greatly.
"Virtual Reality and Interactive Sound Design" is not just the development and study of the 3D scene in reality, but more of an exploration of the new media-base art presentation method. The idea of applying VR interactive technology to converted media art is worth learning and promoting, and the chemical reactions between the two will surely be presented by these outstanding young artists in the near future, which we shall wait and see.
