Cyan Planet hosted a Workshop, addressing virtual reality technology for marine conservation during the annual marine science conference from 24.-28.06.2019 in Brest, France.
Communication in science is of utmost importance. It creates a bridge between the scientific community and the general public. Therefore, communicating in an effective manner is essential for spreading awareness and engaging citizens to take action and help tackle problems that may seem overcomplicated or purely scientific at first, but concern us all.
In June 2019 the "Diving into marine minds" symposium took place in Brest, France, where hundreds of scientists from all over the world took part.
Cyan Planet was happy to host a workshop at the event to introduce students and professors to the world of Virtual Reality (VR), where over 50 people attended. The workshop consisted, firstly, of a short lecture introducing the concept of Virtual Reality, comparing it to different immersive media, as well as presenting its potential applications in everyday life.
Subsequently, we proceeded to explain the different projects the organisation has been working on such as "How is the Water", "One Day as a Researcher" and "Seychelles Coral Reef Restoration" to illustrate what can be done with this type of technology and allow the public to experience the magic of VR, in many cases, for the first time.
Lastly, the participants had the opportunity to create their own immersive experience. They were split into groups, each provided with 360° cameras and left for some time to experiment with them. After filming their ideas, all the teams were gathered again and guided through some basic 360 video editing and rendering. The videos were then transferred into the VR headsets to be visualised by the other participants. We were positively surprised by the creativity and effort put into the production, which resulted in many amusing videos. It was great to see everyone getting involved and working together to develop immersive experiences and momentarily become part of the Cyan Planet family.
The videos created during the workshop can be found at the IMBRSea YouTube page. The equipment we used was kindly provided by Go360.
Taking part in scientific conferences is a great opportunity for us to work and collaborate with scientists. We are grateful that we were invited to communicate the work undertaken at Cyan Planet to a multicultural, highly international audience, by allowing them to get firsthand experience on VR production and science communication with immersive media.
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