The Jutland Station reporting team sat down for SPOT at a dinner table to try out the virtual movie sensation Skammekrogen at Godsbanen. They discovered that it was quite literally an out-of-body experience.
“If you feel nauseous, just close your eyes for a while,” says SPOT volunteer Else Marie Ravn.
“What if it doesn’t help?” we ask.
“Then take your headphones off, and then the glasses. But don’t walk, because other people will feel it.”
After this pep-talk from Else we put on some strange masks and headphones and sat down at a table in the foyer of Godsbanen. Five of us were sitting in front of the nicely served dinning table, ready for the interactive experiment, Skammekrogen (which loosely translates as “shame corner”). With headset technology created by company Oculus Rift, we knew we were in for more than just a dinner-time treat. “Each of you is going to play a character, you don’t actually do anything, you stay in your seat, but you are going to move with the character and you are going to see everything from his or her prospective,” she continues to explain. What follows is one of the strangest experiences we’ve had in a long time.
Experience by Diana:
- I was in the body of a little boy, about 10-years-old, who was only talking Danish (as, actually, all of the characters were – the one downfall of the experience). For the first few minutes I really thought about quitting the experiment, because I felt like I was in someone’s head and he was completely controlling the situation. So I needed to touch the table to remind myself, that I’m still Diana, the reporter from Jutland Station.
The table and the dishes were in the right place, but the little boy in my head moved somewhere else to play outside. And that was a challenge. He was turning his head all around, because of this I got nauseous without being able to control the situation. Another (pretty hot) young guy came over to give a hug to his brother and made me very nervous. I felt like two personalities were mixed in my head. It felt like magic!
After 15 minutes I finally believed that I had a danish father, mother, brother and that I was a naughty little danish boy, who didn’t want to eat boiled potatoes and meat. Then I suddenly found myself in the bathroom ready to do my stuff. I didn’t look down, while he (me) was doing that. “Nobody has done that yet! Everybody is so shy to look down when the boy is in the toilet” tells Else later, when we are discussing the experience. She explains this is because of the special feeling of realism you get during the experiment. “You are so much into the process, that you are afraid that when you look down, someone will put shame on you… But men who get to play the role of the mother in the story often peer into her cleavage’” ‒ she adds, laughing.
Experience by Daria:
I put on my goggles that blindfolded me completely, and then, feeling my way to it, put on my headset. “Let me know when you can hear the sound,” says Else. Finally, the curvy cursive text Skammekrogen flashes across the screen, and I become a 50-year old father. I look down, and see his ‒ mine? ‒ belly in a yellow shirt, and then his stubby hand with an engagement ring knocking at a door. I hear him saying something in Danish, in a low man’s voice ‒ and then he walks into a kitchen.
Every time he walked or leaned down, I had to grab the table or my own arm ‒ to stop my head from spinning. Throughout the whole experiment I noticed that the man was a rather funny person: He stared at his son’s girlfriend, then casually slipped to a room in the basement to smoke a joint ‒ and maybe that’s why I never really felt like we were one and the same person. Sometimes I wondered how we all looked from outside, sitting at an empty table, wearing those screens over our eyes.
Finally, after the father played a little sad tune to his family, the experiment was over. It lasted only 15 minutes ‒ although we all felt like it was much longer. Since none of us felt like getting up immediately, we had a small chat with Else, who told us that the parents are played by two rather famous Danish actors Sofie Stougaard and Ole Boisen, and that the whole thing was filmed 40 times, with each of the actors in turn wearing a helmet with two go-pro cameras (one for each eye).
Originally, the experience was designed for each person to play every character in turn ‒ but nobody at SPOT has done that yet, since the table is fully booked, and most of the people feel slightly dizzy after wearing the goggles. Many of us could not understand the actors talking: an English voiceover could be a good option for future festival. That said, none of us regretted our 15-minutes in another body.
Pictures taken by Nikolas McKinlay
