If 2020 didn’t move us into an era of digitalism fast enough, 2021 surely will. With the world moving further and further into connectivity, our online presence continues to expand, penetrating multiple layers of interdependencies as our experience becomes interconnected with our own networks.

To keep us lingering, the new digital experience has to be dynamic, immersive, interactive – and fun.
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Someone who has been delving deep into this field of interactivity is Mario Amura. With over 20 years in the field of photography and cinematography, and with multiple awards in the bank, Amura has focused his recent efforts on a project called Phlay.

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Creating gamified and interactive video experiences, Phlay allows its audiences to create their own unique version of video content by interacting through multiple storylines. Think Black Mirror’s Bandersnatch, but much less creepy. The user chooses where the story goes; the user becomes the cinematographer. For the advertisement industry, this is revolutionary. When content is interactable and engaging, retention rate increases by 47%, memorability increases by 32%, and users are nine times more likely to purchase the product.

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But more than being used for digital content, Phlay has also helped redefine participation in the cultural sector and the more traditional way of engaging with content, which is often less proactive. In collaboration with the Apulia Film Commission in Italy, Amura and Phlay provided two interactive experiences in which users of a museum exhibition could remix cinema using live film clips with clips from the archives, adding new dimensions to cinematography and allowing for engaging and entertaining experimentation.

“The great Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovskij spoke of cinema as a device that allowed us to “sculpt time”. It is not just a question of immortalizing the moment, but of playing with the perceptual dimension by re-creating the time of vision by oneself, thanks to music,” Amura says. “Compared to visiting the movies, Phlay allows you to add a new variable in the definition of the time of the visual project in which the user is immersed. [It also adds] a fourth temporal dimension to these first three (internal time, external time and musical time): the sense of individual time, that of the performer, who can redefine the general rhythm of vision through his own personal contribution of taste and sensitivity in real-time.”

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On May 19th, during our Crossing Borders: The Future of the Cultural and Creative Industries hybrid event, Mario Amura will be joining us to speak about Phlay and how it is a small but imp ortant step towards a futuristic reformulation of traditionally non-immersive spaces. Until then, you can read more about Phlay and Mario Amura here; and don't forget to sign up to secure your spot to hear Mario Amura speak more about Phlay and the future of cinema!

Sign up here: https://hopin.com/events/crossing-borders.