DARK FACTORY VR
An in-depth look at the making of an immersive experience.
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KATHE KOJA
author of Dark Factory, Dark Park, and Dark Matter
Ari’s a maker, give him anything, anything at all . . .
When I started to write Dark Factory, I felt a lot like the little cartoon person jumping up and down on a wildly overflowing suitcase, trying to make it all fit. But it couldn’t, and very shortly I saw why: because its world – that has grown to include the trilogy of Dark Factory, Dark Park, and Dark Matter; the darkfactory.club site designed and developed by Meerkat Press; all the amazing collaborating artists of various media who have joyfully joined in; even the merch! – turns on an axis of making,
Writer and activist Cory Doctorow wrote a wise and thoughtful review of Dark Factory, highlighting the characters’ “obsession with constructing and maintaining a consensus hallucination in which our reality disappears into something more carnal, more urgent, more atavistic.” Making is one of our very earliest pleasures, and it never gets old. It never can, because the act of creation is endlessly renewing, it keeps going, it keeps growing. And that’s why the Dark Factory project keeps attracting those artists, using video, music, art, scent, and now VR, to discover, to play: to make.
Because making is who we are, and how we keep going through the dark.
CHARLIE ATHANAS
designer of Dark Factory VR
Virtual reality meets the novel ...
The Dark Factory VR project explores the question – what is a novel? Is a “novel” limited to words printed on paper? As technologies progressed past hot type, novels have gone from incorporating elements like illustrations, annotations, and hypertext to completely dispensing with the printed word altogether and using voices and soundtracks in audiobooks. Dark Factory VR is an attempt to further expand the reader’s experience of interactivity and immersion with the novel by using virtual reality as a platform.
Initially Dark Factory VR will recreate the IRL Dark Factory book launch in Detroit as an intro to a larger, virtual Dark Factory nightclub that is playground of interactive environments. These immersive spaces are designed to spark curiosity and creativity similar to the novel’s characters’ experiences within the Dark Factory universe. Turning words in virtual reality.