Chill Out! Interactive Cinema is not Dead!

How to create an interactive narrative that can integrate a brain-computer interface (BCI), namely, the relaxation parameter of an EEG (electroencephalography) headset? This video presents the development process of a co-created interactive short film that uses BCI to trigger the progression of the story. The story puts the interactor in a series of stressful situations that they need to overcome by consciously relaxing their minds and bodies. The interactive short film "Chill Out!" is the result of a three-day interactive cinema workshop developed at Universidad del Norte (Colombia), and it was entirely developed by students. This experimentation is framed in interactive cinema (Hales, 2015), enactive cinema (Tikka, 2008), and interactive digital narrative (Koenitz, 2023) studies. The short film was developed under a collaborative research-creation methodology. First individual tests have demonstrated that narrative affects people's emotions and therefore biological data. During "Chill Out!", most people who were stressed, learned how to relax to progress in the story. Stories that incorporate biofeedback interfaces, such as BCI, are expected to garner increased interest from both the entertainment business and the general public in light of the rapidly evolving technology landscape.


The video starts with a reflection on interactive cinema and enactive cinema, and the integration of BCI and narrative, deepening the power of narrative in altering our emotions and body sensations. It follows with a presentation of the development of the workshop led by professor Chris Hales, the brainstorming of the story, and the production of the short film itself. Finally, this video will present some iterations of the short film during a presentation session, and it will close with a discussion and conclusions of this experiment. Overall, this video will be another creative endeavor that hopes to create emotions around the presented topic. At the same time, these new emotions can be measured and inserted into the same video feeding a meta-narrative around Chill Out! and the future of interactive cinema.